


A Good Omen

by oh_fudgecakes



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mental Institution, Bipolar Victor, Depressed Katsuki Yuuri, Fluff and Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Realistic Psych Ward AU, Recovery, Slow Build, Suicide Attempt, Viktuuri Fluff Bang 2019, the death of one of yuuri's past patients is referenced, why are so many psych ward AUs horror anyway, yuuri’s internalized mental health stigma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2019-12-26 08:27:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18279509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_fudgecakes/pseuds/oh_fudgecakes
Summary: After a patient dies unexpectedly under his scalpel, a guilt-stricken Katsuki Yuuri withdraws from his medical residency and falls into a deep depression. A suicide attempt soon lands him in psych, where he meets dancer turned rising choreographer, Viktor Nikiforov. As Viktor guides him through life in the ward, Yuuri grows through his friendships with the unique individuals that populate the psych ward, and is soon sucked into a burgeoning romance with his 'guardian angel.' However, Yuuri's recovery, and the promise of his inevitable discharge, soon threatens to tear the lovers apart.For the Victuuri Fluff Bang. This work is complete and will be updated weekly.





	1. and the memories i had, i no longer desire

**Author's Note:**

> Last year, an unfortunate series of events found me checked into a psych ward while I was away from home. There, I met the most amazing people who became my second family. They helped me to heal and encouraged me to indulge my artistic side. It was through that experience that I first began getting involved in the YOI fandom events, including the Victuuri Fluff Bang, and has led me to so many precious new friends.
> 
> This fic is dedicated to all the amazing people I met in psych, and to all the friends I've met in YOI fandom who were kind to me when I was fresh out of psych and still incredibly vulnerable. My struggle with bipolar disorder is not over, but at least I know I can weather it better with friends by my side.
> 
> Thank you everyone for the support! Please [reblog](http://madblanco.tumblr.com/post/183804857112/this-is-the-art-i-made-for-bees-ohfudgecakes) or [retweet](https://twitter.com/MadBlanco_/status/1111770572835323904) MadBlanco's amazing art for this fic!

There’s a quiet stretch of road by the river near the end of Courant Sainte-Marie. It’s a beautiful place, with the waters below so dark and so lovely, and the lights of the Jacques-Cartier Bridge glittering over the river like an inverted starlit sky. Beneath the surface, however, lies a dangerous current, one that can easily drown any unprepared swimmer.

Falling into those waters, Yuuri had imagined, would be like falling into the sky.

Darkness would come swiftly after that.

The old brick buildings had spun dizzyingly around him as he’d made his way down to the waterfront that night. That night had been the first of many lows. That night had been the night he’d finally put in his withdrawal from medical school. Cheap champagne had swirled in his system as he stumbled down the promenade, lurching and even falling at times, but the vertigo had soon grown too disorientating to ignore. He had finally collapsed onto a bench by the waterfront, nearly insensate from the alcohol.

He had cried a little then, quietly, without moving from where he lay. He had cried until the alcohol had taken him in heavy fog. Time had passed him strangely in his daze, as if in slow circles, the world muted and sounds coming like from underwater. He had dreamt such strange dreams.

When the dreams finally subsided, and the vertigo finally slowed, he had opened his eyes. And up ahead, standing by the waters in front of an old factory—

He'd seen an angel.

 

* * *

 

“Mr. Katsuki,” a woman’s voice calls. “Your lunch is here.”

He blinks himself groggily awake. Beside his bed, a blurry nurse is standing with a tray.

He sits up slowly, struck by the sense of weight in his limbs. It feels like moving through water, every movement delayed and slow, as he retrieves his glasses from beside his pillow, and puts it on. The nurse’s smiling face comes into focus, along with the rest of the ER.

“Why am I,” he slurs, “so tired?”

The nurse’s smile turns slightly pitying.

“You were having a panic attack, Mr. Katsuki,” she says gently. “The doctor thought it best to sedate you until we could get you a bed upstairs.”

“That's,” Yuuri manages, thickly, “not necessary. I don't need a bed. You don't have to find me a bed. I just want to go home.”

The nurse clears her throat, leaning over gingerly to lower the tray into his lap.

“I know, sweetheart,” she soothes. “I know you want to go home.” It's all he's been saying since he got here, really. “But you see, you're not well, Mr. Katsuki. We're going to have to take care of you until you're feeling better.”

A tear brims over his lower lash line and slides down his cheek. He sniffles, and the nurse exhales, clasping her hands before her.

“I want to go home,” he whispers.

“I know, sweetheart,” she whispers back, “but you're not well.”

Another tear slides down to meet the first, closely followed by another in quick succession.

“I’m— I’m not _crazy,”_ he pleads. “I think there’s been a mistake. I shouldn’t be here.”

The nurse sighs.

“Enjoy your lunch, Mr. Katsuki,” she says quietly. “Please, try to enjoy your stay.”

With that, she turns, and disappears out of the doors.

Yuuri sniffles, dragging the sleeve of his hospital gown over his wet cheeks, and then blinks a few times at the white wall opposite to him. Everything still feels oddly slow around him, every movement feeling like he’s wading through mud. Finally, he fumbles for his tray, raises a slice of bread to his mouth, and bites into it. It’s only then that he notices a young, black-haired man watching him from the opposite bed.

Yuuri is immediately nervous, immediately conscious that this is— this is the _psychiatric wing of a hospital,_ and so, this man must be— must be—

Yuuri drops his gaze to his food, eyes wide, and nervously takes another bite of his bread.

Through his peripheral vision, he can see that ER is in what seems to be a corner of the hospital basement. There are no windows, just yellowing walls and flickering fluorescent lights, beds wheeled up against the sides of an empty hallway. It’s a real dungeon in here. Yuuri finally finishes chewing and puts down his slice of bread. He so drugged up that he can barely taste it.

From the opposite bed, the black-haired man clears his throat suddenly. _Oh god._ What does he want? Yuuri pointedly keeps his eyes on his tray.

“You okay?” the man asks.

And Yuuri— blinks. He finally looks up to meet the man’s eyes. He has nice eyes, grey, and _kind,_ holding a sort of warmth that Yuuri hadn’t been expecting to find.

Somehow, that quiet understanding in his eyes just gets the tears going again.

 _“No,”_ Yuuri sobs. “I don't want to be here, but they won't let me go. Why won't they let me go?”

The corners of the man’s lips dip into a frown.

“Hey,” he soothes, slightly bewildered. “This isn't a prison, you know? This is a place to get _better!_ The ER is pretty shit, but the wards are nice, and you _will_ get to go home once you're feeling better.”

“Once I'm feeling better?” Yuuri repeats incredulously. He lets out a laugh, which quickly turns into another sob. “How is this place supposed to make me feel better?” he cries. _“How am I supposed to get better?”_

He puts his face in his hands, overcome for a moment by forceful sobbing.

And the man— sobers.

For the next few minutes, the ward is filled with only the sounds of Yuuri’s crying. The man speaks again once the tears have slowed, and Yuuri has finally raised his head out of his hands.

“Hey,” he says again, serious now. “Sometimes it just feels like— how _can_ I get better, right?” He chuckles, a little helplessly. “I’ve been there. It's hard to keep hope when you keep finding yourself at rock bottom, time after time. It's hard to keep trying when you don't even know that trying will ever make you well again. But, at least by _trying_ , there’s still a chance that things can change, right?”

Yuuri doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to because right then, the door opens beside them. A short, stout nurse comes in, pushing a wheelchair in front of her.

“Finished with your lunch, m’sieur?” she asks the man with a jolly smile.

“Yes, Madame,” he says politely. “Thank you!”

She grins, and winks. “Then I guess we can bring you up now,” she says. “We’ve got a bed for you up in the general ward, m’sieur. Are you ready to get out of here?”

The man’s face lights up. He swings his legs off the side of the bed and stands.

“Oh, am I ever!” he chirps enthusiastically. “I've been in this dungeon for five days now!”

He sits down in the wheelchair without complaint, and lets her wheel it around and out of the doors, stopping briefly to tap her staff card on the access pad. As she pushes the doors open, however, he turns to look back to Yuuri with an encouraging grin.

“Don't close that door for yourself, okay?” he tells Yuuri. “You're here to get better, so concentrate on doing that! I’ll see you up in East Wing!”

The doors close, leaving Yuuri alone in the white hallway. After a moment, Yuuri sets his tray on the floor next to his bed, and then curls up under the thin blankets.

Somehow, he isn't hungry.

 

* * *

 

Towards the end, Yuuri remembers mulling constantly over what his life could have been like in another version of reality, a _better_ version of reality. What if he had never decided to become a surgeon? What if he had pursued his childhood dream of becoming a dancer instead?

Even now, the clearest memories of his childhood are still those of Minako-sensei’s studio, where he had spent almost every waking moment perfecting his _pliés_ , his _tendus_ , his _ronds de jambe_. Clearest of all, he remembers the day, at five years of age, that Minako had hoisted him onto her hip at his request, and opened the glass doors of her trophy cabinet.

Smiling, she had trailed her fingers gently over the worn metal of each medal, of each trophy, and told him the story behind each one. _I won this one in Paris,_ she said of one. _I won this one in Milan,_ she said of another. _This was from my first international competition,_ she says of a giant crystal trophy. Then finally, with a slow, sad smile— _This was from my last international competition._ Her grey eyes had held such indescribable regret, and the words had fallen from his lips before he could stop them.

“Why did you retire?”

And Minako had drawn up her sleeve.

He still remembers how his eyes had widened and his face had paled, still remembers how _violent_ a sight that long, angry scar along her elbow had seemed to his little five-year-old eyes.

“My partner failed to catch me after a throw,” she explained, with a little huffed out laugh. “I fell off the stage and broke my arm. The doctor at the hospital set it for me, _wrongly_ , and only realized after it had healed. They had to perform open surgery to break the bone and reset it.”

Setting him down on the floor of the studio, she had held her arms aloft in demonstration. And for the first time, Yuuri had noticed that her left arm remained crooked in first position, bent awkwardly like a broken wing.

A shift had come upon him then, a calling that would change his life as he knew it. His dreams of dancing fell away, replaced by unyielding conviction. He would become a surgeon. He would train his hands to cut and to break — but only to heal, never to hurt. He would become the best of the best, and would make sure that this _never_ happened to another person. _Never._

When he'd gotten into medical school at McGill University, Montreal, his family had thrown a party at the inn in celebration. Minako had been there, of course. She had always been his number one supporter, had always encouraged his dream of becoming a doctor. He still remembers her proud, tearful smile as she had toasted him that night.

“Oh, Yuuri,” she had laughed. “You’re going to be such a great surgeon one day. I just know it.”

God, how that memory hurts now.

 

* * *

 

In the morning, a nurse comes with a smile and a syringe. “It’s okay, darling,” she says soothingly. “We’re just getting out of here. You’ll be fine. It’s just a sedative, alright?”

Too tired to fight, he just holds out his arm.

After that, he is helped into a wheelchair. The nurse tucks a fleece blanket around him before she taps her card on the reader beside the door, and finally wheels him out of the ER. He closes his eyes for a bit. When he reopens them, he is being wheeled out of the lift and into another locked door. There are a lot of doors inside, a lot of wards, and in each of them, someone is getting up for the day.

“This is East Wing, the general ward,” the nurse tells him. “It’s just about breakfast time.”

Somehow, however, they do not seem to be stopping. At the end of the hallway, there is another door. The nurse taps her card on the reader, and then pushes it open – on the other side, there is a short hallway, where a man is freezing in place at their sudden entrance. After a moment, the surprise breaks into a glare, before he slinks off into one of the rooms, drawing the door shut with a loud slam.

“Don’t mind M’sieur Crispino,” the nurse tells Yuuri. “He’s just unhappy that he’s been separated from his sister. Welcome to the Crisis Treatment Unit!”

Oh, _no._

They’ve put him in the _high security ward._

Yuuri turns around, looking frantically back out at the general ward, but the nurse doesn’t seem to notice his panic. She continues to wheel him down the hallway, still chattering away.

“This is where you’ll be staying until— oh! Good morning, M’sieur Nikiforov!”

Yuuri turns his head. There’s a man sitting curled up against the window, silhouetted against the morning sun. At the nurse’s greeting, he turns to look back at them. His hair is silver, and his skin is pale. He is dressed entirely in white. In the grey light, there is almost a sense of unreality about him. The only things of color on him are his eyes — a stark, cornflower blue.

For a moment, those eyes meet Yuuri’s.

Then, the man _smiles._

And in that moment, sedated and disoriented, Yuuri is struck by the irrational thought—

_An angel._

The nurse wheels him into one of the rooms and helps him into the bed before she leaves. There's a window above the desk next to him. He watches the sunlight creep across the worn wood for long minutes as he ponders the encounter outside. Who had that man been, he wonders, and why hadn't he been in a hospital gown?

His lids grow heavier with every passing minute, until finally, he closes his eyes. The questions in his mind scatter. As he drops off into sleep, he can't help but remember what he had thought that night by the river, the night he had withdrawn from medical school, and can't help but think it again now.

 _Perhaps_ , he thinks, _this might just be a good omen._

 

* * *

 

Growing up, Minako had always said that with his stubborn personality, he would surely excel at anything he put his mind to — and it was true that for awhile, he _had_ excelled at medical school.

He’d done well enough by the end of freshman year to earn himself a prestigious scholarship. As a junior, he had caught the eye of a respected surgeon during his rotations. Cialdini Celestino had taken a shine to him, and in senior year, Yuuri had applied for residency in Celestino’s department. Upon graduating, he had gone straight into his residency, under the tutelage of one of the brightest surgeons in North America.

His future had seemed so bright.

The little problems had come first, fixable ones. His first real mistake, a slightly misplaced incision, had been extremely alarming, but ultimately still fixable. Celestino had stepped in to calm him when there had been a little more blood than expected, and he had successfully completed the operation. Despite that, the incident had still left his ears ringing and his hands shaking for an hour.

Practice, he had soon come to realize, was a whole different world from theory. Being his studious self, he had excelled at the theory of surgery, but looking back now— he had perhaps been a little less gifted in the practice of it.

Two years into his residency, he’d made his first _big_ mistake. He remembers it in vivid detail, even now. He doesn’t think he will never forget.

Blood.

Blood everywhere.

He had once read that the chance of a patient dying on the operating table was one in five hundred thousand. _One in five hundred thousand_ . What does that say about him? God, _what does that say about him?_

He had made sure that his first mistake would also be his last.

 

* * *

 

“Dinner!” comes a woman’s voice. “Wake up, Mr. Katsuki!”

He opens his eyes just as the door to his room closes.

He hears the woman moving on to the next room, calling out to the next occupant. For a long moment, he just stares uncomprehendingly at the ceiling. It feels like a hundred tonne blanket has been laid over his body. His whole body is numb. His _brain_ is numb. It feels a little like he’s had too much to drink, like the world is spinning around him, except that he has no real urge to blabber or to even move.

He continues to lie there until two sharp raps come at his door. A woman he does not recognize, but who must be a nurse from the scrubs she is wearing, peers into the room.

“Dinner is here, Mr. Katsuki,” she says again.

With some difficulty, Yuuri manages to sit up and follow the nurse to the dining area. There are seven other patients seated at the small table. The only seat left is opposite the man from before, _Nikiforov,_ the nurse had called him, beside a sandy-haired man who is having a spirited argument with—

Yuuri is not actually sure who he is arguing with.

With an awkward clearing of his throat, Yuuri turns to the cart that has been pushed beside the table. There is a tray on the cart with Yuuri’s name on it. He retrieves it and sits down, somewhat reluctantly, in the last available chair.

Opposite him, a wall of windows overlook the parking lots in front of the hospital, and behind the table, the ward is separated from the nurse station by a sheet of glass. The same nurse pushes the door to the nurse station open, and goes inside.

The sandy-haired man continues to chatter to himself beside Yuuri. Yuuri tries his best to ignore it, but his voice is getting progressively louder as the “argument” heats up, until finally—

“For _fuck’s_ sake, Nekola!” a young blonde man bursts from the other end of the table. “Will you _shut_ your _fucking trap_ and let us eat in _peace?!”_

Yuuri shuts his eyes tight as the room descends into complete, utter silence. He’s fully expecting a fight to break out, but after a moment—

“Oh,” the man— Nekola, says. “Sorry about that. I’ll stop.”

He goes quiet.

Yuuri opens his eyes slowly. All the patients have returned to eating in silence. Suddenly, the nurse pushes the glass door open and leans out of the nurse station.

“Mr. de la Iglesia,” she calls, holding up a small cup of pills. “Your medication.”

A tanned young man stands and heads over to the nurse station to take the pills from her. She passes him a cup of water along with it. “Mr. Plisetsky,” she calls next.

The blonde teen who had shouted stands up.

“Mr. Nikiforov,” she calls after that.

But Nikiforov just turns to smile sweetly at the nurse. “I sleep too early when I take my medication before food!” he reminds the nurse angelically. “Can I take it after dinner, please?”

The nurse nods once in acknowledgement, before calling out the next name. “Mr. Popovich.”

Nikiforov turns back to the table. When he notices Yuuri watching him, he smiles.

Yuuri quickly drops his gaze to his dinner of chicken, fries, and coleslaw, mortified to be caught staring. There is a plastic fork and spoon set out beside it, the disposable kind. He quickly picks it up and tries to dig in— try being the key word. The plastic bends and twists as he attempts to cut into his chicken.

He looks discreetly over at Nekola’s plate next to his. The chicken has been meticulously cut up into small pieces and mixed into the fries. Biting his lip, Yuuri changes his grip slightly, and tries again. After a few strained moments, the head of his fork breaks cleanly off.

Yuuri sits there quietly for a long, long moment. Finally, he sets the broken fork aside, and picks up his spoon.

He will just have to make do with the fries and coleslaw.

 

* * *

 

There are times at night when he still dreams of blood.

He must have revisited that scene in his head a hundred times by now. For months, it had played in his head again and again like a broken reel. He must have cut into an artery. He must have misplaced an incision. He must have done _something._

With every touch, there had been blood. With every stitch, there had been blood. There had been so much blood that he couldn’t even see past it. Celestino had stepped in. Someone had yelled for more bags of blood to be brought. More hands. More bloodied hands on pale, waxy skin. Someone had begun trying to evacuate the blood so they could continue with the operation.

The patient had coded.

“Fuck,” Celestino had whispered, and begun cardiac compressions.

The room had been awash with people in masks, yelling for more blood, yelling for a tie, a tool, a defibrillator. Someone had run in with the requested blood. Yuuri had looked up, and seem blood splattered over to front of every gown. The patient had coded twice more.

After the third time, Celestino had finally stepped back from the table.

Yuuri still remembers the look that had been on his face, a look of bone-deep weariness, weighing down on lines that Yuuri had never noticed before. He had looked so abruptly exhausted. He had looked like he’d aged a decade. The pandemonium of shouts, of hands, of bodies moving urgently around each other in the tight space, had died to a numb silence.

Celestino had looked to the monitor, still wearing that look of utter exhaustion.

“We’ve done all we can,” he had said.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Yuuri wakes up early feeling lucid for the first time in days.

He notices at once that it’s still dark outside. He had been so sedated the night before that the medication he’d taken at dinner had knocked him out almost immediately. His body feels heavy, distinctively lethargic in a way that speaks of having slept too long.

Swinging his legs off the side of the bed, he stands, and leaves his room. The short hallway outside is dark, but there is light coming from the nurse station. Perhaps today, he will ask the doctor to discharge him. He’s been in here for too long already. He doesn’t belong in here. He needs to get _out_.

When he steps into the darkened dining area, he notices someone sitting against the window. It is Nikiforov again, shuffling a deck of cards.

He looks up at Yuuri’s entrance and, noticing Yuuri, smiles. Yuuri averts his eyes again. Nikiforov is not in a hospital gown, but Yuuri has realized by now that he must be a patient too, and Yuuri doesn’t want to think about what this unassuming-looking man must have done to have ended up here. The last thing Yuuri needs is to invite conversation. He just needs to show the doctor that he doesn’t belong in here, and then get the hell out. Even if they won’t let him go home, shouldn’t he be out in the general ward instead?!

Yuuri goes up to the nurse station and knocks on the glass. There’s a nurse sitting inside, typing something into a computer. She comes over at his knock and opens the door.

“Yes, Mr. Katsuki?”

“I just wanted to ask if my doctor will be seeing me today,” he murmurs quietly.

“It depends.”

Yuuri bites his lip, a little confused. What does it depend on?

“Do you know who my doctor is?” he asks. “What time will he be coming?”

The nurse sighs, looking at her watch briefly. “It depends,” she says again. Yuuri is beginning to dread that response. “He’ll be making the rounds in the general ward first before coming here. Perhaps he’ll arrive after breakfast.”

She closes the door, and returns to the computer, leaving Yuuri feeling vaguely frustrated.

But _when is breakfast?_

He sighs. Maybe the nurse has been stuck with a bunch of clerical duties. Yuuri will brush his teeth, and maybe take a shower, before he bothers her again.

He walks back towards his room, and immediately spots a cart at the end of the hallway. A short pile of freshly laundered gowns and towels have been placed on the top shelf. Beside the cart, there is a door, which he opens to find a small bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower. He picks up one of the gowns. It is a large. He checks the one underneath it. It is also a large. He rifles through the entire pile, before he turns and heads back to the nurse station.

He knocks at the glass again.

The nurse looks up from her typing. This time, when she opens the door to speak to him, she raises an eyebrow. “Yes, Mr. Katsuki?” she asks.

“There are no hospital gowns in my size,” he says, “and are there any pants to go with them? I was checked in unexpectedly and do not have a change of underwear.”

“We don’t usually have enough pants to go around,” the nurse tells him. “You’ll have to wait for the orderly to replenish the cart.”

“When is that?” Yuuri asks.

“It depends.”

Yuuri exhales.

“Alright then,” he manages.

The nurse closes the door, and returns to the computer. Right. He can leave the shower for later then. He’ll just brush his teeth first. He pauses on the way to the bathroom. He doesn’t have a toothbrush or toothpaste. Maybe there are spare sets in the bathroom? His heart sinks as he peeks into the bathroom. There aren’t any spare toothbrushes on the sink. With a sigh, he turns back around, and goes back to the nurse station for the third time.

He knocks at the glass again. This time, however, the nurse does not look up. Frowning, he knocks once more, harder this time, figuring that she must not have heard him. She continues to type. Yuuri comes to an uncomfortable realization then.

She’s _ignoring_ him.

He stands at the nurse station for a few long seconds, chest feeling oddly tight.

Nikiforov clears his throat from behind. “The nurses do that a lot,” he says.

Yuuri finally turns around.

“Do what?” he asks hoarsely.

Nikiforov smiles. “Ignore you when you knock on the glass,” he says, and then gestures towards the table. “Why don’t you take a seat? Breakfast is in about an hour. You can ask for what you need when the nurse dispenses the medication. In the meantime, my name is Viktor. Viktor Nikiforov.”

_Viktor Nikiforov._

Yuuri sits down at the table, committing the name to memory.

“I’m Yuuri,” he says.

“How has your stay here been so far, Yuuri?” Viktor asks.

Yuuri considers his answer carefully. “Stifling,” is what he finally says. “I don’t know if it’s just me, but this has all felt vaguely patronizing.”

Viktor laughs. “Welcome to psych,” he jokes, “where every emotion you display and every complaint you makes is scrutinized and attributed to an episode, when hey! Maybe I’m just crabby, like an average human being, because dinner is late and I’m really hungry!”

Yuuri smiles hesitantly, charmed despite himself.

“There’s scientific evidence to suggest that low blood glucose levels can result in irritability,” he notes, “so being irritable is a very natural response.”

“I will be sure to let the nurses know that next time,” Viktor says, and laughs again. “But I’m sure they will attribute that sass to an episode too. It’s frustrating, isn’t it? When I knock on the glass too many times, they assume I’m having an episode and ignore me, and that of course makes me irritable, which they then take as confirmation that I’m having an episode! Maybe I just really need something, you know?”

“That’s exactly what happened to me,” Yuuri commiserates. “I just wanted a toothbrush and toothpaste.”

“As well as a gown in your size, and fresh underwear?” Viktor adds, and nods sympathetically. “I heard you. I have a toothbrush and clean underwear, but those are unfortunately not shareable items. I do have toothpaste, however!”

Yuuri laughs.

“Thanks for the offer,” he says. “Where did you get these things from anyway?”

“I asked a friend to bring them,” Viktor explains. “It’s far from my first time here, so I know what I need for my stay. You should call someone to bring you underwear.”

He points to a phone, which Yuuri is only just noticing, on the table outside the nurse station. It makes sense that there would be a landline in here. Yuuri had been extremely out of it when he had first arrived at the ER, but he distinctly remembers the nurses confiscating his phone before admitting him. With some relief, he walks over to the landline, picks it up, and pauses with it held to his ear.

But who can he call?

Phichit immediately comes to mind, of course — but he has not memorized Phichit’s number, and cannot access his phone to check his contacts. Even if he did remember Phichit’s number, though, he doesn't know if he would impose on Phichit even more, especially given recent events. He doesn’t know if Phichit even wants to talk to him after what happened.

Yuuri wouldn’t blame him even if he never wants to see Yuuri again.

With a quiet sigh, he puts the phone back down.

When he turns back around, Viktor is watching him with a vaguely confused expression. “I don’t remember any numbers,” Yuuri explains sadly. “Only my family’s, but they are back in Japan.”

Viktor’s face falls.

“Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry. That must really suck.”

Yuuri sits down at the table again. “Yeah,” he sighs.

The room goes silent for awhile. After a moment, however, Viktor pushes himself off the window ledge, and comes to sit at the table with Yuuri. _“Hoard the pants,”_ he hisses, cupping a hand around his mouth like he’s imparting some kind of dirty secret.

“Excuse me?” Yuuri asks, taken aback.

Nikiforov leans in closer. “There’s toothpaste and shampoo in the nurse station that you can ask for,” he whispers, “but there’s never enough pants when the orderly brings them in, so _hoard them!_ My first time in here, that’s what I did. Just steal a pair or two from the cart and keep it in your drawer. Going commando is one thing but—” he makes a face “—having to walk around in a hospital gown without pants _or_ underwear is a _really_ uncomfortable experience.”

Yuuri can’t help it. He begins to laugh.

“Noted,” he manages, still laughing.

At that moment, the door behind them opens, and an orderly comes in with a cart of towels and gowns. Viktor leans in. _“The pants,”_ he hisses urgently. _“Go hoard them!”_

Laughing even harder, Yuuri manages to stand up. “Thank you,” he says, sincerely.

And Viktor smiles.

“You’re welcome,” he says simply.

As Yuuri turns down the hallway towards the bathroom, he finds that he is still smiling, so widely that his cheeks are hurting now.

 _An angel,_ he thinks amusedly to himself, _a guardian angel._

 

* * *

 

The night that had landed him in psych is a blur to him, even now.

He knows that he had had one too many glasses of champagne, as he’d been prone to do towards the end of things. The long walk down to the riverside had been hazy to him, a whirl of colors and sounds. He doesn’t remember much else of what happened.

He only remembers Phichit.

Phichit shouting.

Phichit grappling with him as he’d tried to climb over the railing.

Phichit _crying._

Sirens, and lights, and voices, too many for him to really process in his drunken state. He’d been dragged back from the railing and pushed into a police car, and separated from the officers by a sliding glass screen, he’d bent over his knees and cried. When they reached the ER, he remembers hyperventilating, remembers his mad dash through the ER, remembers banging his fists against locked doors and screaming _let me out,_ screaming _I want to go home._

The nurses had quickly sedated him after that.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Viktor gives him a tour of the premises. The tour is very short. The ward is only about ten steps long after all.

Yuuri already knows where the bathroom and the dining area is, although he _is_ grateful to learn that there is a deck of cards above the locked fridge. It is only afterwards, when Viktor pulls him into his room for a verbal introduction on the ways of the ward, that things get interesting.

 _“Privileges,”_ Viktor hisses meaningfully, jabbing a finger into Yuuri’s chest. “You need to ask your doctor for them, or else you’re going to _die_ of boredom in here. I’m not joking, Yuuri! Don’t laugh!”

The thing is that Yuuri isn’t going to _need_ these ‘privileges.’ He’s not going to be here for very much longer after all. But still, Viktor is charming, and very enthusiastic, and so —

“Alright,” Yuuri indulges, still chuckling. “Tell me what these _privileges_ are.”

Viktor leans over and fishes a notebook and pen out of his drawer.

“Don’t tell the nurses I have a pen,” he says absently, flipping through the pages. “My doctor will probably take my privileges away. We’re not really allowed to have sharp objects in here, you see.” He finally reaches a blank page. “Aha!” Yuuri leans over as he begins to draw a map. “So we’re here, in Crisis Treatment, but the door out there leads out into East Wing, the general ward. Have you seen the communal area of East Wing?”

“No,” Yuuri admits. “I was pretty sedated when they wheeled me in.”

Viktor begins to draw in the general ward.

“So adjoined to the communal area are two rooms,” he says, drawing two rectangles. “The first is the community room, where we have community meetings every morning, and _this_ room next to it is the occupational therapy room. Outside, there are computers that you can use if you like.”

He completes the drawing with a little flourish, before looking back up at Yuuri.

“These are all readily accessible to the people in the general ward, of course,” he explains, “but for us folk here in Crisis Treatment, it’s a little more complicated. If you want to go out and use the computer, attend community meetings, or join occupational therapy, you need to ask your doctor for _privileges._ Otherwise, there’s no way you’re getting out of that door. Do you smoke?”

“No,” Yuuri says, making a face.

“Well, those who do need to ask for smoking privileges. I don’t smoke, but my doctor has allowed me to go outside with the smokers on their smoke-breaks so I can get some fresh air.”

“Fresh air.”

“Fresher than being stuck in here,” Viktor defends, and Yuuri laughs.

“And is that why you don’t have to wear a hospital gown?” Yuuri asks. “Because of privileges?”

Viktor taps him playfully on the nose with his pen, winking.

“Exactly!” he says. “You catch on so fast, Yuuri! If you’re behaving particularly well, your doctor might give you the privilege of wearing your own clothes in the ward! You don’t have to suffer a pantsless existence then!”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Yuuri notes dryly. “I’ve been wearing these pants for two days. Once the right side, and now inside out. When are they going to bring more pants?”

“Pray to the pants gods,” Viktor tells him, and jumps up, throwing his notebook and pen back into the drawer, before bumping it closed with his hip. He pushes the door open. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to the others. Bonjour, m’sieur!”

The orderly nods in acknowledgement from where he’s piling a fresh stack of hospital gowns on the cart outside the bathroom. No pants, however, Yuuri is disappointed to note. A moment later, a muffled yell issues from the toilet amidst the faint sounds of falling water. Yuuri jumps.

The orderly curses under his breath, and begins to bang on the door. _“Mon Dieu,_ not this again— M’sieur?! Mr. Plisetsky, what are you _doing_ in there?!”

Yuuri stands there, gaping, until Viktor begins to pull him impatiently towards the dining area. “That’s just Yuri,” he whispers to Yuuri. “Don’t mind him. He’s probably just punching the wall again.”

 _“Fuck off!”_ a muffled roar comes from behind them.

“Mr. Plisetsky! Open this door at once!”

Yuuri looks over his shoulder again, concerned, but Viktor just guides him insistently towards the dining table. “Hey Georgi! Yuuri, this is Georgi Popovich. Georgi, this is Yuuri Katsuki. He’s new to the ward.”

There’s a dark-haired man sitting by the phone. He raises his head at Viktor’s call, and Yuuri notices awkwardly that his eyes are swollen almost shut, probably from crying. _Yikes._ The man nods miserably at Yuuri, and Yuuri nods back. There’s a young tanned man sitting in the window, shuffling a deck of cards. He smiles at Yuuri and Viktor.

“Hey Viktor,” he greets, “Hello Yuuri.”

“This is Leo de la Iglesia,” Viktor introduces.

“It’s nice to meet you, Leo,” Yuuri returns obligingly.

Leo hops down from the sill and sits at the table. “Crazy Eights? The only thing vaguely interesting on TV right now is 90 Day Fiance, and today’s episode is a real dud.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Viktor says, sitting down opposite him. “Yuuri, come play with us!”

Yuuri sits down at the table. “I don’t know how to play,” he admits.

“It’s no big,” Leo says, with a shy grin and an easy shrug— Yuuri is immediately charmed. “Here, I’ll show you how to play.”

Yuuri leans in as the boy begins his explanation of the game.

 

* * *

 

The doctors begin to trail in shortly after breakfast, seeing them one by one in their rooms, or in the nurse station. Viktor is one of the first to get called into the nurse station by his doctor. He’s out again in a matter of minutes, just as Yuri Plisetsky comes out of his room with his own doctor.

Leo is still shuffling the deck for another round of Crazy Eights as Viktor comes over, clapping a jovial hand on Yuuri’s shoulder.

“Yuri and I are heading off for occupational therapy!” he announces. “Will you be alright by yourself?”

“Leo’s here,” Yuuri says, gesturing towards his new friend, “and if we get too bored we can always watch 90 Day Fiancé.”

Yuri makes a face. “I hate that show.”

“Nothing better to watch in here, though,” Leo points out morosely, before nodding down at his hands with a somewhat self-deprecating grin. “Nothing better to do but shuffle cards, day in, day out.”

Yuuri reflects that much of his stay in this ward _has_ taken place against the backdrop of those  cards being shuffled in some shape or form. He notices then that the edges of the cards are worn and frayed, which means this whole sad card-shuffling business has been going on for much longer than he has been around.

Viktor soon heads out of the door with a wink and a little wave. Yuri, Crispino, and Georgi go with him, shutting the door behind them. That leaves Leo and Yuuri alone in the common area. Leo finally finishes shuffling and begins dealing out the cards.

“You don’t have occupational therapy privileges either?” Yuuri asks him.

Leo chuckles. “Nah,” he says. “I’ve only been in here for two days and my doctor has been on family leave the whole time. The substitute doctors don’t give out privileges— if they even bother to come and see you.” He laughs. “I’m not _‘interesting’_ enough.”

“I think you’re plenty interesting,” Yuuri protests automatically.

Leo just laughs again as he finishes dealing the cards, putting the rest of the deck down between them. He tilts his chin towards the nurse station. Inside, the head doctor is sitting with Nekola, surrounded on all sides by glass walls and a cluster of eight note-taking medical students. All of them are watching Nekola with eager eyes.

“He believes he can communicate with machines,” Leo says simply. “I’m not _that_ kind of interesting.”

_“Oh.”_

They lapse back into silence. Yuuri follows Leo’s lead, picking up his cards and beginning to reorganize them, before finally fanning them out to survey his hand. Oof. This is not looking good. After a moment, Leo closes the fan of his cards and lets out a sigh.

“I have a terrible hand,” he admits.

“Me too,” Yuuri concurs.

Leo sighs again.

“Let’s just give it our best shot.”

The game drags on for quite awhile, neither of them quite able to lose their cards properly due to their poor hand. Inside the nurse station, the head doctor continues to speak with Nekola for an _inordinate_ amount of time. When the door to the ward finally opens, and another doctor comes in with a clipboard, Nekola is still with the head doctor.

“Katsuki Yuuri?” calls the newly-entered doctor.

Yuuri jumps to his feet. “I’ll be back,” he tells Leo, before following the doctor into his room.

Inside, he sits down on his bed, folding his hands nervously in his lap. The doctor pulls out the chair from the desk and seats himself in it.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Katsuki?” he asks.

“Fine,” Yuuri says. “Good, actually. I think I ended up in here due to a bit of a misunderstanding. When can I get discharged?”

The doctor makes a note.

“What does this ‘good’ feel like? Are you experiencing a sense of euphoria? Racing thoughts? Feeling on top of the world, and like you can do anything?”

“No,” Yuuri says flatly. “A _normal_ sort of good.”

The doctor makes another note, before looking up from his clipboard.

“Unfortunately, your doctor is on family leave at the moment—“ Oh, _gods_ , no. “—I can put a note in your file recommending that you be discharged when he comes back, but you’ll have to wait to see what he thinks about discharging you.”

Yuuri licks his dry lips. This is looking bad.

“When will he be back?” he asks hoarsely.

The doctor looks back down at his notes. “He’s on family leave until Friday, but the regular doctors don’t come in on the weekends, so— probably next Monday?”

That’s an _entire week._ Yuuri closes his eyes.

“Alright then,” he says.

There’s nothing else he can say.

The substitute doctor calls Leo next. Yuuri sits at the table, fisting his fingers in his hair with a frustrated groan. Inside the nurse station, the head doctor has dismissed Nekola and now appears to be debriefing the medical students. After the debrief, they all trail out, leaving him by himself in the empty common area. He is still sitting there in the same position when Leo comes back out of his room.

“Your doctor is on leave too?” Leo asks. “Man, that must really suck.”

“I think we have the same doctor,” Yuuri commiserates.

Silence ensues. After a moment, Leo picks up the deck, and continues shuffling it. “Being in here isn’t half bad, you know?” he begins, a little awkwardly. “It takes some getting used to, but it’s ultimately a place to get better.”

“I know that,” Yuuri sighs, “but they definitely made a mistake with me. I’m not supposed to be here. The problems I have— they are not something that can be solved just by sitting in a ward, surrounded by white walls. This won’t make me any better.”

Leo finishes shuffling the cards, and finally puts the deck down between them, clearing his throat quietly. He looks up to meet Yuuri’s eyes, with a small, understanding smile.

“Give it a chance,” he tells Yuuri. “At least until next week— give it a chance.”

And Yuuri just sighs.

“Well,” he chuckles, “I don’t exactly have a choice now, do I?”

Yuuri picks up the cards, and begins to deal them.

At that precise moment, the doors to the ward swing open with a _bang_ , and Viktor comes rushing excitedly in. Yuri Plisetsky dashes in right after him, face flushed and pleased in a way that Yuuri hasn’t seen before. They are both holding something cupped carefully in their hands.

“We made apple crisp at occupational therapy today!” Viktor shouts. “Yuuri, Yuuri, come and try some!”

They put the two portions of apple crisp on the table, set on top of a tissue, before Yuri goes to knock sharply at each room.

“Apple crisp!” he’s yelling. “Come out and get your share before I eat it all!”

A nurse, the nice one who had wheeled Yuuri up on the first day, comes in behind them, chuckling. “Alright, m’sieurs, I have some forks here for the rest of you.”

“Yes!” Viktor and Yuri shout in unison.

The rest of the patients begin to trail sleepily out of their rooms, gathering around the common table. Viktor balances some apple crisp on his fork, scrunching his nose adorably in concentration as he tries to raise it to Yuuri with trembling hands. “Here,” he coaxes, “try some.”

Obligingly, Yuuri leans forward to take a bite.

“It’s good,” he manages after a moment, one hand over his mouth as he chews.

And Viktor’s face, _all_ of it, _lights up_ like some kind of improbable lantern. His blue eyes are bright, and his hair blows faintly in the wind from the ceiling fan, glowing against the sunny window like wisps of moonlight. Yuuri can’t help but smile then, a little helplessly, in return.

 _An angel,_ he thinks fondly. _A guardian angel._

And as he picks up a fork to help himself to another mouthful of the apple crisp, slightly burnt on one side, but still so cinnamony and _sinful —_ a quiet, hopeful voice speaks up from somewhere inside him.

 _Perhaps,_ it says, _this might just be a good omen._


	2. je repars à zéro

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the support! Please [reblog](http://madblanco.tumblr.com/post/183804857112/this-is-the-art-i-made-for-bees-ohfudgecakes) or [retweet](https://twitter.com/MadBlanco_/status/1111770572835323904) MadBlanco's amazing art for this fic!

Over the next few days, Viktor begins to guide Yuuri patiently through life in the ward, introducing him to the other patients as they go.

There are a total of eight patients in the ward. Aside from him and Viktor, there’s Leo, of course, Michele Crispino, the young Yuri Plisetsky, Emil Nekola, Georgi Popovich, and a mysterious patient by the name of Cao Bin, who Yuuri has only seen on one occasion. Even though she’s not from Crisis Treatment, Yuuri also comes to meet Michele’s sister, Sara Crispino, sweet, sweet Sara Crispino, who apparently comes to the door separating them from East Wing every morning to wish everyone a good morning. Her violet eyes light up with a beatific smile when she comes to that tiny square window, and she manages to mouth a  _ god bless you, _ before Michele rushes eagerly forward to greet her.

There’s not much else to do in Crisis Treatment, so Leo, Viktor, and Yuuri spend much of those first days playing cards. Yuri and Michele join them for a round or two, but don’t stay for long. Michele still seems suspicious of them all, only joining them in the mornings when he’s waiting in the common room for his sister to come. Yuri gets too annoyed by Viktor’s teasing, and also hates it when Viktor calls Yuuri’s name, confusing him because it sounds exactly like Yuri’s. Leo, on the other hand, is always up for a game of cards, but spends a great deal of time on the phone with his family. Each of his calls lasts an hour or longer, and he makes  _ multiple _ calls a day, which Yuuri soon learns is because his older sister has just had a baby.

As a result, Viktor and Yuuri are often left to themselves. Crazy Eights isn’t the most compelling game when played as a game of two, and so they usually spend this time chatting. Yuuri deeply enjoys their conversations. From the very first day, he discovers that they share many common interests, dance being the biggest of them.

Viktor, Yuuri finds out, is a contemporary dancer. He had spent most of his performing years in St. Petersburg, moving to Montreal as part of his transition to choreography. Yuuri immediately begins quizzing Viktor about the shows he has worked on in Montreal. Despite the hectic load of medical school, Yuuri  _ has _ continued to make space for dance in his life, attending regular classes, watching performances, and even entering competitions as part of his modern dance club in university. He is thrilled to confirm that he has  _ indeed _ seen Viktor’s choreography for himself. He remembers it distinctively, a modern take on Sleeping Beauty that he’d watched with his university’s dance club.

“I really liked that dream sequence you put in for Aurora while she was asleep,” he confesses. “The floorwork in that one was just  _ amazing _ . I swear to god it was like she was  _ flying _ across the floor, and everyone in my row was just making a ruckus gasping and crying out loud. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“My parents were both from circus families,” Viktor explains, “so a lot of my floorwork is very circus-inspired. I’ve been trying to incorporate acrobatic elements in my choreography, but sometimes directors don’t like it because—well, it’s  _ too showy, _ as they like to say. It doesn’t mesh with the artistic direction they are going for.”

“You need your own show,” Yuuri tells him with utter conviction. “Your choreography is the kind that pushes the boundaries of modern dance. It needs to be the heart, the driving center of an exploratory piece, not just— _ subsumed _ into some classic that’s been told and retold a million times, pinned under the thumb of some director’s traditional sensibilities.”

“Where have you been all my life?” Viktor asks jokingly.

“Viktor!” Yuuri cries. “I’m serious about this! I’m  _ really _ serious!”

That day, they had gotten so caught up in their conversation that they had done little else but rant for the whole evening, continuing late into the night. At some point, Yuri had even come out of his room to yell at them to  _ ‘go to sleep, for Christ’s sake, and stop yabbering us all to death!’  _ They had subsequently taken their late night conversation into Viktor’s room, sitting together on the bed and lowering their voices to avoid disturbing their neighbors. Viktor tells Yuuri about his mother, a circus acrobat, and how he came to love dance because of her. In return, Yuuri tells him about Minako and the many ways in which she had mentored him.

In the days that follow, they talk about a myriad of other things as well. Yuuri talks about his adjustments to the food in Montreal— _ Yuuri, you need poutine in your life— _ about how he’s  _ lactose intolerant, Viktor—What?! Noooo!— _ and about the apartment he shares with Phichit near Place D’Armes. They had been assigned to room together in one of the McGill residences and had quickly become friends. Even more quickly, they had come to a fervent agreement that they needed to move somewhere nearer to Chinatown to find better food. Not only was Phichit lactose intolerant as well, Yuuri had also quickly grown acquainted with his addiction to anything and everything spicy.

“I don’t want this whitewashed bastardization of Southeast-Asian cuisine!” he would lament constantly during those early days. “Where’s my chili?! Give me my chili!”

Viktor, on the other hand, lives in the Gay Village, sharing a flat with Georgi, who Yuuri learns is a novelist, and a saxophonist by the name of Christophe Giacometti. He is self-reportedly  _ ‘a boring person,’  _ although Yuuri disagrees deeply with that assessment. According to Viktor, his days consist only of training and rehearsals during the day, and his evenings of nightly strolls down the St. Lawrence. St. Petersburg, Viktor explains, is also by the water, and being by the waterfront has always reminded him of home.

“Hasetsu is by the water too,” Yuuri tells him. “Unfortunately, the river here holds bad memories for me now.”

Viktor had seemed vaguely crestfallen at that. After a moment, however, he had brightened again.

“I’ll bring you there to make new memories,” he swears. “I’ll show you the good places to eat along Place D’Armes, and the good places to watch the sun set along the port. Have you been to the clock tower? That’s one of the best places to sit at dusk. Afterwards, we can head up to watch the city from the Jacques Cartier Bridge. I’m a great tour guide!”

The promise makes Yuuri smile. He’s been plagued by the persistent reminder that his time with Viktor here is only transient, that it will end when he is discharged. At least now, however, they’ll still be friends afterwards, even if only for a time.

His chest warms at the thought.  
  


* * *

  
In the days that come after that, Yuuri discovers that the hospital’s television subscription is complete and utter  _ shit _ .

He and Leo are usually the only ones left in Crisis Treatment in the mornings, while the others are out in East Wing partaking in whatever activities are ongoing before lunch. Unfortunately, the only channels available for them to watch are a strange mix of golf, news, and French channels, with a single English entertainment channel that seems to air little else but reruns of 90 Day Fiancé and Mayday: Air Crash Investigations. Because the latter gives Yuuri anxiety, that leaves them with only 90 Day Fiancé to entertain themselves, which Yuuri is starting to recognize as a complete  _ catastrophe _ of a reality TV show.

The series follows a selection of Americans and their foreign fiancés who have obtained 90-day visas, and thus have 90 days to decide to marry. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion, horrifying, but riveting.

Case in point: the episode he and Leo are currently watching.

“Dios mio,” Leo is whispering, horrified, eyes pinned to the screen.  _ “Dios mio _ , do  _ not _ reject the food from her family. Do  _ not— _ “

The man rejects the food.

“Oh, my god,” Yuuri deadpans. “You stupid white man.”

“That is so rude!” Leo shouts. “That is  _ so rude! _ You do not just—reject a literal  _ feast  _ that your fiancée’s family cooked for you!”

“I bet she’ll break the engagement,” Yuuri adds.

They continue to watch as the Filipina woman pulls her fiancé aside, visibly upset. As expected, she breaks off the engagement soon after.

Both of them slump back in their seats for a moment as the credits roll, neither saying anything. The silence is eventually broken by a quiet grumbling noise.

“And now I’m hungry,” Leo says miserably. “Dios mio. That roast pig looked  _ delicious.” _

“I can’t believe he turned it down,” Yuuri agrees. “I would literally kill someone with my bare hands for a roast pig right now.”

“Why’s the food in here so terrible?” Leo moans.

“Why’s the  _ cable _ in here so terrible?” Yuuri laments.

They both heave heavy sighs, lapsing back into silence. Finally, however, Leo begins to smile.

“It’s going to be my baby niece’s one month celebration soon,” he shares, a little shyly. “My family is going to cook up a huge feast, and I’ve asked my mother to bring the leftovers. You can have some if you’re alright with Latin American cuisine.”

“I would love that,” Yuuri agrees at once, touched by the gesture of friendship.

Leo leans back in his chair, stretching his arms overhead with a groan, before closing his eyes. “Man,” he exhales, “I still can’t believe I’ll be missing it. I can’t believe she’s  _ a month old _ now, and I still haven’t seen what she looks like. You just—lose so much of your love ones’ lives to addiction, you know? That’s why I’m determined to stay here until I’m better again, even if it means missing more of their lives. I don’t want to lose any more of the time I have with them. From now on, I want to be fully present in the life that I share with those people I love.”

“That’s a really good attitude to take,” Yuuri tells him. “I respect that.”

Leo chuckles. “Well, I’ve had a lot of time to think it over,” he admits. “I was actually pretty mad at first! It wasn’t my choice to come here. My family filed for court-ordered treatment after I almost overdosed. I’ve come to realize recently that they did it out of love and desperation, and now, I just want to go back to the old me, the me before drugs stole my life away, the me before I almost lost everything to the high. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to return to the old me, but I’ve been thinking of checking myself into rehab once I’m discharged anyway. That will cost some money, though.” He sighs, and then smiles again. “I’m still checking out my options.”

Yuuri folds his hands carefully in his lap, touched that Leo had trusted him enough to tell him his story, but unsure of what really to say. He’s never been that good with words. “It’s good that you’re taking your recovery so seriously,” he says eventually. “I really admire you for that, Leo. It sounds like you love your family a lot.”

“Yeah,” Leo agrees fondly, before turning to look at Yuuri. “What about you? Do you have family in Montreal?”

“No, my family is in Japan.” Yuuri says. He hesitates for a moment, before admitting, “They still don’t know that I’m in here. I haven’t spoken to them in a while.”

“You should call them!” Leo encourages immediately. “You can use the landline.”

“I don’t have an international calling card,” Yuuri says.

Leo’s face falls.

“Oh,” he says. “Man, that sucks. I’m sorry.”

“It’s no big,” Yuuri assures him quickly.

There’s also the simple fact that Yuuri isn’t going to be in here for much longer. His doctor will be back on Monday. He’s hoping to be out by then.

Before they can continue the conversation, the door to the ward opens, and Viktor and Yuri come striding in the orderly, already arguing about something or another. Viktor has that impeccably cheery air about him that so infuriates Yuri, pausing the argument for a second to let out a delighted, “Yuuri!”

“And that’s another thing!” Yuri shouts. “Call him something else! I was here first, and I refuse to let this go on any further! There cannot be two Yuris in this ward!”

“The fact that you are both standing here shows that there  _ can,  _ in fact, be two Yuris in a ward,” Viktor says blithely, “but since you’re so opposed to be called by the same name, I guess you’ll be Yurio from now on!”

Yuri stomps his foot. “I was here first, so if anything,  _ he _ should be Yurio!” he screams, before storming off into his room.

“Viktor,” Yuuri intones disapprovingly, as the door to Yuri(o)’s room slams shut behind him. “You tease him too much.”

“I can’t help it,” Viktor defends, laughing. “He’s just too cute when he’s mad.”

“Please don’t let him hear you say that,” Leo says faintly from behind them. “I think he might  _ actually _ find a way to tear this ward down around us if he hears you calling him  _ cute.” _

He picks up the phone without further ado, dials in a number, and holds the receiver to his ear. After a moment, he lights up, beginning to chatter away in rapid fire Spanish. Yuuri turns back just as Viktor seats himself at the table.

“Why do you tease him so much anyway?” Yuuri prods.

Viktor grins, eyes fond. “He’s like my little brother,” he says, with a little laugh, “a tiny, angry little brother I never expected to pick up.”

“Please,” Yuuri pleads, “don’t let him hear you calling him tiny either.”

Viktor just laughs again. “We’ve always been put in Crisis Treatment together,” he explains. “We’ve known each other for a long time because of that.”

Yuuri hesitates before asking. “What is he in here for?”

“Drugs,” Viktor says, and smiles wryly, ”and anger management too, of course. Yuri’s been put outside in East Wing a couple of times, but his temper always lands him right back in here with me. This time, he’d apparently punched and broken a mirror out in East Wing in a fit of anger, and so got transferred back to Crisis Treatment. Before you came, his hand was all bandaged up for a good two weeks.”

“Yikes,” is all Yuuri can say.

Viktor exhales. “He’s a good kid, you know,” he tells Yuuri quietly. “It’s just that people usually write him off too early because of his prickly exterior, so they never get to see how sweet he really is on the inside.”

Yuuri can believe that. He’d seen a little of that sweet boy in Yuri’s eyes that day, in his excitement as he’d barged in with his hands cupped, in how his face had glowed with simple delight as he’d handed out the forks for everyone to try the apple crisp they’d made.

“Sometimes,” Yuuri muses, “people just aren’t the most understanding of people who are different.”  
  


* * *

  
The next day, he waits in his room all the way until eleven, before he figures that his assigned doctor isn’t coming today. It’s the second day in a row, really, not that Yuuri minds much at this point. There’s nothing a stand-in doctor can do for him anyway, so he’s not fussed even if no one comes until his doctor returns on Monday.

That sentiment, however, doesn’t seem to be a shared one, as Yuuri discovers upon heading out into the common area. It’s a cloudy day, the sky overcast over squat concrete buildings of Côte-des-Neiges. He finds Michele sitting in front of the landline in the dim light, hunched over with his face in one hand, the receiver held to his ear with the other.

_ “Santo cielo,”  _ he’s cursing into the phone. “Is it too much to ask that he just  _ come _ and  _ tell me  _ when he’s moving me to East Wing? I’ve been asking for him for  _ days,  _ but he spends an hour with Nekola, and then tells me he doesn’t have the time to talk to me for even  _ five minutes?!” _ A short pause.  _ “When did he tell you that?!”  _ Michele demands indignantly, and then— “I am  _ not  _ being sharp with you, ma, I just want to goddamn know  _ when _ he told you he had no intention of moving me, when  _ I’ve yet to even fucking hear about it!” _

More silence.

_ “Per l’amor di dio—  _ I’m twenty-five years old, and I’ll swear if I fucking want. Why isn’t he moving me? Did he tell you that?!”

Yuuri reaches above the fridge and takes the deck down, but drops it in surprise as Michele suddenly slams his hand down on the table.

_ “What?!”  _ he screeches. “When did this happen?  _ Che cazzo _ — that son of a whore!” He is quiet for a moment. When his voice comes back, it comes back at full volume. “For fuck’s sake, ma,” he bellows, “just tell me when the hell this happened! What do you  _ mean _ calm down? How can it be that my  _ mother _ knows more about my treatment here than  _ I  _ do? I’m a grown-ass twenty-five year old man. How can it be that my doctor has apparently  _ changed one of my fucking medications completely,  _ without me even being alerted?! And now he’s saying that’s why he isn’t moving me to East Wing?!  _ Cazzo, ma, non so più che— _ “

He is cut off as one of the doors slam open.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Crispino, will you  _ shut the fuck up?!” _

“Piss off, Plisetsky!” Michele shouts back, before pressing the receiver back to his ear, continuing more agitatedly. “Look! Just tell me what he—“

“Are you  _ trying  _ to wake the whole damn ward?!”

“I  _ really  _ don’t need your attitude right now, Plisetsky!”

Well. 

Yuuri bends to pick up the deck as Michele slams the receiver down, and stands up to commence a shouting match with Yuri. After a moment of consideration, Yuuri heads towards the window ledge to sit down, stopping briefly to flip the lights on. He blinks as Yuri turns abruptly on him.

“Can’t I get any goddamn peace in here?!” Yuri screams in his face. “Blyad! Poshol nahuj! Why does everyone in this goddamn ward have to make so much  _ goddamn fucking noise?!” _

“Dio santo— You’re the one making noise for no damn reason!” Michele shouts back. “He was just trying to turn on the lights!”

“No lights!” Yuri screeches. “No talking! Blyad, everyone just be quiet!”

_ Withdrawal _ , Yuuri realizes suddenly, and reaches immediately for the light switch. The poor boy must be sensitive to light and sound. Yuuri turns the lights back off without complaint, leaving them lit only by the fluorescent lights of the nurse station, and the overcast sky.

Right then, the nurse on duty comes bursting out of the nurse station with a thunderous scowl, holding two plastic cups.

_ “Alright!” _ she hollers. “Mr. Plisetsky, Mr. Crispino, both of you take this.”

“I don’t  _ need _ a pill!” Michele explodes. “It’s  _ him  _ who needs one—no, who needs  _ ten!  _ Tell my doctor I want to see him!”

“Mr. Crispino, I’ve already told you twice today! Your doctor will see you tomorrow! Now—“

_ “That’s what you said yesterday!” _ Michele howls.

_ “Now,” _ the nurse continues more loudly, “Are you going to cooperate and take your medication, or am I going to have to let the doctor know you had an episode today?!”

“I’m not having an episode!” Michele protests. “I just want to know what business that son of a whore has changing my medication without telling me!”

“Boga radi, do you really think you’re the only one, Crispino?!” Yuri shouts. “You’re the only one who just won’t shut up about it!”

“Piss off, Plisetsky!” Michele screams. “Like you’ve ever been able to shut up about  _ anything  _ in your whole damn life!”

He storms off into his room, slamming the door behind him. The nurse exhales, and then turns, and wordlessly hands one of the cups to Yuri, along with a single white tablet. Yuri pops the tablet without protest, only a scowl.

“Can I have a pencil and paper?” he asks, but the nurse just heads back into the nurse station without answering, slamming the door behind her. “Blyad! What’s her problem?”

The nurse sits down in front of the computer, beginning to type. Yuuri experiences a sudden sense of deja-vu, recalling the day when he had been ignored, and hops off from the ledge determinedly. He knocks politely on the glass of the nurse station. A pause. The nurse visibly exhales again, closing her eyes, before she comes to the window and opens the door.

_ “Yes _ , Mr. Katsuki?” she asks pointedly.

“Can he have a pencil and paper?”

“Mr. Plisetsky is not allowed to be in possession of sharp objects while he’s like this.”

Yuri jumps to his feet, indignant. 

“What am I going to do with it?!” he howls. “Stab someone?! We’re not all murderers and rapists, you know? What, just because we’re warded here means we’re all going to kill someone? I’m an  _ addict,  _ not a serial killer!”

“What if you give him a marker instead,” Yuuri suggests reasonably, nodding towards one of the whiteboard markers on the desk in front of him, “and some paper off that notepad.”

The nurse rips a sheet off the notepad and hands it to him, along with the marker. “Anything else, Mr. Katsuki?” she asks.

“No. Thank you.”

Yuuri takes the marker and paper from her. He slides it across the table to Yuri as she yanks the door to the nurse station shut, going back to the computer. Clerical duties? A lack of coffee? Had she just woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?

Yuri scoffs and Yuuri realizes he must have spoken aloud.

“It’s more like they think we’re  _ animals,” _ Yuri mutters, but picks the marker up, and hunches over the paper without further complaint.

Yuuri retrieves the deck of cards from where he’d left it and begins to shuffle it absently as he sits back down on the window ledge. He stops when he notices Yuri twitch. Right, he remembers.  _ Quiet. _ Setting the deck down, he curls up against the window and peers out over the parking lot instead. The leaves are turning slowly orange, tumbling across the tarmac like grains of dark sand. The clouds overhead are a dark, stormy grey. It looks like it will rain soon.

Sure enough, a drizzle soon begins to fall.

For the next five minutes, the room is silent save for the sounds of falling rain, and the scratch marker against paper, each stroke harsh, but confident. The scratches get gentler the longer the silence drags out, until they eventually stop altogether. When Yuuri gets up to put the deck back on top of the fridge, he double takes. The paper Yuri had been working on is now filled with abstract scribbles. There are harsh lines, and gentle ones, thin ones, and thick ones, all layered over a series of dots, dashes, and geometric shapes. It does not seem to be a drawing of anything in particular, but there is something, something  _ compelling _ , about the composition of those scribbles.

“That looks really good,” Yuuri blurts out, surprised.

Yuri startles, looking up with wide eyes. After a moment, the surprise melts into a soft, pleased look. “You think so?” he asks.

“I  _ really _ think so,” Yuuri tells him, sitting down at the table. “Where did you learn to draw like that? Can I see?”

Yuri nods, rotating the paper so Yuuri can see better.

“My grandpa was a painter,” he says. “I grew up on his knee, watching him paint. Dedushka uses watercolors, but I’ve found that oil paints suit me a little better. It’s too bad the ward only stocks acrylics, though. The occupational therapy room isn’t well-ventilated enough for oil.”

“So this isn’t the final result?” Yuuri asks, examining the piece of paper. The line quality is even better up close.

Yuri shakes his head. “This is just a sketch,” he says. “Ideally, I would have preferred to do this on a big canvas with some nice reds, some blacks, and maybe a few dashes of grey here, and here.”

Yuuri follows the deft sweeps of his finger over the paper, and the painting begins to come together in his head. “Wow,” he breathes. “It’s like one of those abstract paintings you’d find in museums.”

Yuri’s face lights up. “I’ve been trying to break into the scene lately,” he tells Yuuri. “But it’s really hard to get noticed! Dedushka is retired now, and his contacts are all back in Moscow. The scene here— I don’t even know how to get started. There was once I just set up my own exhibition in my studio apartment.” He grins. “I put a standee below like ‘paintings on display on the fourth floor’ and some people came up, but no one wanted to buy anything.”

“I would definitely buy a painting like this,” Yuuri says at once, before continuing, more wryly, “if I could even afford one of these. Imagine a painting like this hung up in my shitty apartment over all the dirty laundry and take-out packets.”

It’s the first time Yuuri has seen Yuri  _ laugh. _

“Here,” he says, sliding the paper over the table. “I’ll give this to you. It’s just a sketch, so it won’t look out of place over your dirty laundry and take-out packets.”

Yuuri receives the gift with reverent hands.

“Thank you,” he breathes.

As he slips the paper carefully into his drawer later that night, he recalls again the open warmth that had been on Yuri’s face, the  _ wonderment _ that had been there in his green eyes. A faint smile begins to pull at the corners of lips as he pushes the drawer gently shut.  


* * *

  
The common area begins to get livelier and livelier after that. Yuri begins joining them for Crazy Eights, loud, crass, and full of sass. He’s  _ genuinely _ charming and hilarious once you get used to the bite of his humor. Yuri is also a great accomplice, constantly ganging up on Viktor with Yuuri during their games, much to Leo’s amusement.

“He’s imprinted on you,” Viktor accuses one day, fake-tearfully holding what seems to be  _ half the deck _ in his trembling hands.

“He’s not a baby, Viktor,” Yuuri says, without looking up from his cards. “Imprinting only happens in the first few hours of life.”

He puts down a two.

“Draw two cards, Viktor.”

_ “Yuuri,” _ Viktor whispers, betrayed.

Yuuri high-fives Yuri over Viktor’s head, as Leo bursts into uncontrollable snickering.

The commotion has begun to draw Emil from his room. Although he always declines to play, he always seems to enjoy the game vicariously through them, laughing, gasping, and jeering at all the right places. A few times, he even drags Michele out of his room to play. Yuuri is surprised when Michele sits with Emil throughout the game, explaining the twists and turns when things get too fast, filling him on the turns he’d missed while preoccupied with chattering to something they all can’t see, and occasionally asking for Emil’s opinion on which card to play. Yuuri hadn’t realized that they were  _ friends. _

Over time, however, he grows to notice the underlying friendships within the ward. As Yuri later explains to him, this is not the first time they have all been warded together. Many of them have been in and out of Crisis Treatment for years.

It’s nice.

It’s  _ homey. _

The period between breakfast and lunch is still a lull period for Yuuri and Leo. Everyone else heads out into East Wing, leaving the two of them behind. There’s one particular day, however, that Emil joins them at the table. Leo offers to deal him a hand, as usual, despite knowing that he will decline. It’s only polite.

This time, however, Emil does not say no immediately. Leo blinks, but catches on faster than Yuuri does.

“We’ll go slow,” he promises. “It’s a lot easier to keep track of everything when there are less players.”

Ah.

“If you don’t remember any of the rules you can just ask as well,” Yuuri adds.

Finally, Emil nods.

“Alright then.”

Grinning, Leo deals him the customary eight cards. “So we start with me, because I’m the youngest, and we’ll go clockwise.”

They play one round, slower than usual, explaining the rules again whenever necessary. Emil doesn’t win, but he still looks extremely satisfied, if slightly tired, by the end of the first round. He doesn’t seem interested in playing a second round. Yuuri gets the feeling that he’d just been proving a point to himself.

Leo catches on again, the perceptive boy that he is, and grins, reaching for the phone. “I’m gonna take a break to call my family. You guys talk.”

And so they talk.

It’s a good conversation. Emil had apparently been a computer science undergraduate at McGill when his schizophrenia had begun acting up. They talk about the miserable hike up the hill to get to their classes, about the anxiety of icicles forming above the entrance to the library, and about cheap samosas that are so bad but so goddamn good. Occasionally, Emil shoots off an aside to someone who isn’t there, and at one point, he even gets derailed into an entire argument with it that Yuuri cannot make heads or tails of. When the argument dies down, however, they resume their previous conversation. The security camera overlooking the common area, Emil tells him then, very seriously, is a particularly sassy bastard.

After about half an hour, Emil retreats to his room, but not without thanking Yuuri for the conversation.

“People don’t usually want to talk to me, you know?” he says, laughing, more carefree than his words warrant. “They don’t usually try.”

Everyday, from then on, Yuuri makes the time to hold a short conversation with Emil, sometimes joined by Viktor, or Leo, or Michele. And there are some days where Emil is well, and some days when he seems disoriented, too busy arguing with his voices to be able to hold any conversation for more than two seconds. Some days, the words coming out of his mouth make sense individually, but not when put together. Some days, the words are not any words that Yuuri thinks exist. On most days, however, he just needs a little time. On those days, Yuuri learns to be patient, to wait for him to finish speaking to his voices before gently redirecting him back to their conversation, to sit through the periods of nonsense words until he begins to make sense, or just to remind him of his train of thought when he begins to forget halfway.

Yuuri also gathers that Michele is a lot fonder of Emil than he lets on, because he starts to join them more often in the common room after that. 

Georgi is another unexpected, but welcome presence.

Yuuri has no idea what he’s in psych for, but his medication seems to be  _ incredibly _ sedating. He will often only play with them for half an hour after breakfast and dinner, before his medication kicks in, and he goes back to sleep.

“Georgi’s been in and out of Crisis Treatment as long as I have,” Viktor tells him quietly, in Yuuri’s room. “We actually met in Gorodskaya bol’nitsa—one of the hospitals in St. Petersburg. We agreed to move here together. He has borderline personality disorder, but this breakdown is the worst I’ve seen so far from him.”

“Oh?”

Viktor bites his lip. “So just between you and me,” he confides. “I thought she was a bad idea all along. He had gotten into this— _whirlwind_ _romance_ with a woman he met at a bar. Seriously, they got engaged after a month, and then two weeks after that, she broke off their engagement and left him. The doctors have put him on an _extra_ strong dose this time, but I think they are starting to ease off to see if he can cope without it.”

“Yikes,” Yuuri says.  _ “Yikes.” _

“Right?” Viktor agrees. “I tried, I really did, to persuade him not to get too attached. I could sense that she wasn’t the most mentally stable girl in town either but— Georgi, he makes bad decisions, you see. He’s impulsive, and everything’s just all or nothing with him with no in between. We’re alike in many ways, but he’s so much more  _ volatile.” _

They all live in such close quarters, that it comes as no real surprise when Yuuri comes out of his room late one night, drawn by the sound of muffled sobbing, only to find Georgi crying over the landline.  _ Yikes. _ He stands there for a moment, deliberating what to do, before finally deciding to talk to him.

“Hey,” he says awkwardly, sitting opposite the desolate man. “Are you... okay?”

Georgi sniffs.

“She keeps hanging up on my calls,” he whispers into the table.

Had he been trying to call his ex?  _ Yeesh.  _ Yuuri reserves judgement, however, remaining silent as Georgi sniffles quietly into his arms.

“She’s engaged to someone else now,” Georgi eventually manages, after about a minute has passed.

“Who?” Yuuri asks.

“Anya.”

Well. That must be the name of his ex. “That’s rough,” is all Yuuri can say, the words sounding awkward even to his ears.

“We’ve only been broken up for a month,” Georgi continues nevertheless, not lifting his head, and Yuuri winces.  _ Yikes.  _

“That’s  _ really  _ rough,” he says, a little more emphatically this time.

Georgi sniffs again, and finally raises his face off his folded arms. His eyes are swollen almost shut, just like the first time they had met, right here, in the exact same spot.

“What am I going to do?” Georgi asks him helplessly. “I’m nothing without her. My life is an empty void now, like a black hole sucking away all meaning, all joy. Without her, I don’t even know who I  _ am _ . Who am I without her? Bozhe, everything hurts. It physically hurts to be without her. It’s like I can’t feel anything else over the ringing in my ears these days. I don’t know what else to do.”

It sounds almost stereotypically like heartbreak, like something a teenager might say, but—as Georgi continues on with his lament, Yuuri begins to get the feeling that he genuinely means it. He  _ genuinely _ feels that that pain. He feels  _ everything _ this intensely. Yuuri wonders if it’s part of his personality disorder, and his sympathy for Georgi deepens a little. He really can’t imagine what it must be like to  _ feel this much.  _ Unsure how to help, and not fully understanding, just  _ knowing _ that Georgi’s hurting, Yuuri can only listen. And so, without speaking, he just listens. He doesn’t trust himself to offer any input anyway.

Eventually, Georgi seems to have said all he can, and trails gradually off into silence, tears still leaking slowly down his face. Yuuri waits for him to speak again for a few moments, and when he doesn’t, clears his throat awkwardly.

“I’m really sorry,” he manages, somewhat at a loss. “I— I can’t imagine what you must be feeling like right now, and I wish I could help, but I just don’t know how I can make things better for you.”

Georgi sniffles a little, and licks his reddened lips. “It’s alright,” he says hoarsely. “Thank you for listening to me. People usually get frustrated at me for getting so upset, but I can’t help it! Yes, I know that— I know that  _ normal _ people don’t react so extremely to every thing that happens. I just can’t control it. Sometimes—“

He swallows. 

After a moment, he continues, a little more quietly.

“I’ve been starting to wonder, more and more, if there’s even a way out of this vicious cycle of pain. Maybe there isn’t a way out. I’m tired, you know? If there’s no way out, if I’m always going to just end up here again, then what’s the point? What’s the point of continuing to try at all? Maybe there isn’t a point. Maybe it’s time to give up.”

Yuuri recognizes that talk. More than anyone, he recognizes it. Frantically, he also realizes that he needs to  _ say _ something,  _ anything, _ and yet, he finds himself at a loss. How does he convince someone else to live, how does he convince someone else to  _ try,  _ when he can’t even convince himself—

“Georgi,” he hears his own voice start vehemently, abnormally high, and sounding like it’s originating somewhere outside his body, “you know that isn’t true.”

Georgi blinks, looking up at the sudden conviction in Yuuri’s voice. Yuuri bites his lip. After a moment, he recalls the words that man had spoken to him in the ER, when Yuuri had been low, lower than he could ever have possibly imagined, and he finds himself echoing them now.

“I know,” he whispers numbly. “I  _ know _ it’s hard to try when you don’t know if trying will ever make you better again. But Georgi, by trying, you’re fighting to maintain that  _ chance,  _ no matter how slim it might seem, that you might one day emerge from this darkness. And yes, maybe it’s true that you’ll just end up here again eventually, but at least by fighting, you’re giving yourself the chance to enjoy life again, even if only for a moment. Don’t close that door, Georgi. Don’t give up on your possibility of a future.” He takes a deep breath. “This is a place for you to get better,” he says, with a conviction he doesn’t recognize, “but to get better, you  _ have _ to muster up the courage to keep  _ trying,  _ even when the odds seem impossible.”

A strange wave of emotion sweeps over Yuuri then, so strong that he has to close his eyes against it. Meanwhile, Georgi remains silent for so long that Yuuri almost begins to think that he had said something terribly wrong. Then—

“Thank you,” Georgi says solemnly. “I will think on what you have said today.”

And as he stands, leaving Yuuri alone in the common room while he excuses himself to the bathroom to wash his face, Yuuri comes to a strange realization.

_ I want to believe it,  _ he realizes.

__ I want to believe those words I said.  
  


* * *

 

  
The weekend arrives. As promised, Leo’s mother brings in a  _ feast _ on Sunday night. Yuri goes knocking at every single door, calling every single one of the ward’s patients out into the common area. Most of the food that’s been brought are leftovers from Leo’s niece’s one month party, with one notable exception.

There’s a whole suckling pig. 

There’s a  _ whole suckling pig.  _

“You  _ said _ you wanted to eat roast pig, mijo,” nags Leo’s mother. “Why are you so surprised?!”

“I didn’t think you were  _ actually _ going to bring a whole roast pig!” Leo cries.

They raise their plastic cups of Coca Cola in a toast to Leo’s mother, the maker of culinary miracles, before digging in with their plastic cutlery. It’s not long before Leo’s mother is pulling a carving knife from the  _ trolley bag  _ she’s brought. “Sit down, all of you. You’re not getting anywhere with those miserable plastic forks. Sit down! And you! Yes, you! You’re too skinny. You take the whole leg.”

She clunks a whole pork leg into Yuri’s plate, and then turns to cast a sharp look over the rest of them.

“Dios mio,” she mutters, “you’re  _ all _ too skinny!”

Surrounded by the sounds of laughter, of crinkling plastic, and the homely scent of apples, cinnamons, and slow roast, Yuuri is filled with an inexplicable sense of warmth for the unlikely friends he’s made over the week. He looks around at them all. Even  _ Georgi _ is smiling for a change, as Leo’s mother leans over to pinch his sallow cheek.

_ Thank you _ , he thinks.  __ Thank you all.  
  


* * *

  
He is woken the next morning by a doctor he has never seen before. He has a clipboard with him, and a white coat around his stern-looking shoulders.

“Good morning, Mr. Katsuki,” he greets. “I must admit that it is good to see you fully awake. The last time I saw you, you were so out of it, you didn’t even seem to notice I was there.”

Yuuri blinks a few times, and then sits up slowly, rubbing the crust from his eyes.

“Good morning,” he says hoarsely.

“You’ve been asking to be discharged, haven’t you?” the doctor continues clinically, without further ado, referring back to his clipboard. “You have been telling the stand-in doctors that you feel fine.”

“I have,” Yuuri says.

The doctor looks back up at him.

“I do not feel that are being completely honest with us, Mr. Katsuki,” he says simply.

A moment of disbelief, before it melts quickly into irritation. “If that’s how you would like to think, good doctor, then there is genuinely nothing I can do to change your mind,” Yuuri says icily. “You’ll just believe I’m lying no matter what I say.”

“I’m not saying that you’re lying,” the doctor says. “I just think that you are not being honest with us.”

Yuuri exhales, and then closes his eyes, slowly gathering himself

“Between 1969 and 1972,” he begins, voice calm, save for the tremble of his underlying rage, “eight experimenters feigned hallucinations and were admitted into twelve hospitals. After admission, they behaved normally and told staff they were no longer experiencing hallucinations. Nevertheless, normal behaviors observed by staff were characterized as abnormal, and pseudopatients were forced to admit to having mental disorders as a condition of release.”

“What are you trying to suggest, Mr. Katsuki?”

“I don’t know, good doctor,” Yuuri says, still not opening his eyes. “What do you think I’m trying to suggest?”

The doctor does not reply. He just scribbles on his clipboard for a long time. Yuuri does not speak to interrupt him, just continues to sit there in silence with his eyes closed. Eventually, however, the doctor finishes writing, and looks up.

“I believe you may benefit from staying in the ward for a little while longer. What do you think about that, Mr. Katsuki?”

“Oh, I agree with you, sir,” Yuuri says at once.

And that finally seems to surprise the doctor.

“I admit that I expected you to fight the decision,” says the doctor, and Yuuri—Yuuri just smiles.

“At first,” he says, “I hadn’t believed that a place like this could possibly make me better. I’ve come to realize, however, that places don’t make you better. Perhaps I just needed to be ready to try again, and I think I’m ready now. Yes, places don’t make you better, but there are  _ people _ here who make me feel, for once, that trying might actually be worth it.” He chuckles. “So you’re right, doctor, that I might benefit from staying here a little longer.”

The doctor watches him for a long moment.

“I am glad to hear that from you, Mr. Katsuki,” he finally says. “I think you’ll also benefit from some time outside this ward. The Crisis Treatment Unit gets very small after awhile.” He picks up his clipboard again. “Try going for community meetings and occupational therapy. If you’re not tired after that, you can join the activities. I believe it’s yoga this week. Is an half an hour, twice a day, to use the computer enough?”

“Yes,” Yuuri agrees, surprised by the sudden turn of events. The doctor notes that down.

“Additional smoke breaks?”

“No, I don’t smoke,” Yuuri declines, before changing his mind. “Though it would be nice to join the smokers outside for a breath of fresh air.”

“Of course,” the doctor says, and notes that down as well. “Would you prefer to wear your own clothes in the ward?”

“That’s alright,” Yuuri declines. “I don’t have any clothes with me anyway, and I don’t have anyone to bring any for me.”

“Right,” the doctor says, checking something off, before looking up. “Then I will see you again soon, Mr. Katsuki.”

He stands up and leaves. The door clicks quietly shut behind him.

Clenching his eyes shut, Yuuri gathers himself for a moment, before flipping the covers off his legs and getting up. He heads out into the common room to see Leo, Yuri, and Viktor already there. Leo is grinning ear to ear, probably from having seen the doctor and getting all his privileges, and Yuri is looking incredibly sour.

“You got Dr. Gee!” Yuri complains. “He’s so permissive! He  _ always _ gives  _ all _ the privileges right away! Ugh, do you know how many times my doctor has taken my privileges away when I gave him attitude?”

“I don’t like him,” Yuuri says.

“You don’t need to like him,” Leo scoffs. “You just need to  _ milk _ him.”

_ That is also true _ , Yuuri thinks. Finally, Viktor seems to be unable to hold himself back anymore. “This week is yoga,” he cuts in, all but  _ vibrating _ from excitement, “but Yuuri,  _ Yuuri, _ next week is  _ dance!  _ Bozhe, I can’t wait to bring you out to East Wing with me, Yuuri!”

_ Dance. _ Yuuri immediately brightens at that.

“And since we’re on that topic,” Yuri announces loudly, “I make a mean piroshki, just so everyone knows, so you guys  _ better _ be coming to occupational therapy to try it!”

“East Wing!” Leo shouts, jumping up from his chair. “Here we come!”

Yuuri just laughs as Leo and Viktor join hands with him, throwing their hands up above their heads with a loud cheer.

_ A good omen,  _ he muses fondly.  _ This must be a good omen. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the support! Please [reblog](http://madblanco.tumblr.com/post/183804857112/this-is-the-art-i-made-for-bees-ohfudgecakes) or [retweet](https://twitter.com/MadBlanco_/status/1111770572835323904) MadBlanco's amazing art for this fic!
> 
> I'm really sorry if I won't be able to reply to all your wonderful comments on a weekly basis! It just so happens to be finals period right now. Please do know that I AM reading them, and sobbing happy tears all over my notes as I go.


	3. and I feel in my heart, that the seed has been sown

Without further ado, Viktor begins showing him around East Wing with characteristic enthusiasm. He brings Yuuri with him to the community meeting on that very first day, and introduces him eagerly to everyone attending. These meetings, Yuuri learns, are a kind of group-therapy-cum-support session, where attendees share their progress or raise complaints. The occupational therapy room is a homey collage of paint splatters, odd dents and scratches, but is somehow all the more welcoming for it. Viktor takes over the occupational therapist’s introduction to the available activities with classic zeal, dragging Yuuri all around the room with him, and insisting on sitting together throughout it all.

Yuuri discovers that Viktor can be _very_ bossy. His hands tremor from his medication, making it hard for him to use the chalkboard during the community meeting. Instead, when he wants something written on the board, he stands with his hands on his hips and dictates aloud while Yuuri writes. He nags and pushes and drags Yuuri all around East Wing. Yuuri finds it endearing. _Heavens,_ does he find it endearing. Viktor, he can’t help but muse, is the pushiest backseat driver of a guardian angel he thinks he’ll ever meet.

“Yes, my angel,” he responds, every time Viktor tells him what to do in that loud, insistent way of his. “As you wish, my angel.”

At that first community meeting, Yuuri runs into the man he’d met in the ER. His name is JJ. He is Québécois, and he has a fiancée who is expecting, who he can just _never_ seem to stop talking about. He spends five minutes of that community meeting gushing about her, defying all subtle efforts by the moderator to stop him, and about the gorgeous, beautiful daughter he’s going to have who is going to look _exactly_ like her mother.

When they come back that day, a cheery nurse leans out of the nurse station to greet them. Yuuri immediately recognizes her as the one who had wheeled him up from the ER that first day.

“How was your first day out in East Wing?” she calls. “Did you boys have fun out there?”

“We made piroshki, Miss Carie!” Yuri announces. “I brought some back. Do you want some?”

Miss Carie leans over to peer into his cupped hands, and groans. “Oh, that looks so good,” she moans, “but I’m going to have to say no, sweet pea.”

“You weren’t on duty here last week, Miss Carie,” Leo pipes up.

“Oh, I was down in the ER again last week, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”

“I say we sign a petition that Miss Carie be assigned to Crisis Treatment _all_ the time!” Viktor says loudly. “All in favor say aye!”

“Aye!” Leo echoes immediately.

Miss Carie laughs. “You boys are so sweet.”

Just then, the phone inside the nurse station begins to ring. Miss Carie offers them a warm smile, before she draws the door closed, and goes to answer the phone.

“Miss Carie is back!” Leo cheers.

“She’s, like, the nicest nurse in the _whole_ psychiatric department,” Yuri tells Yuuri.

“I’ve noticed,” Yuuri agrees. “She’s really friendly.”

“Isn’t she?” Viktor asks. “She was the one who started us all playing Crazy Eights. She taught us when she found out that we couldn’t play anything because we only knew different games from another.” He laughs. “We have a pretty diverse population in here.”

And they do. They do have a diverse population. Yuuri soon gets to know Sara in the flesh, and is introduced to her roommate, a young Russian named Mila Babicheva. While Yuuri and Viktor are quickly invited to join them during occupational therapy, Michele seems to be deprived of that privilege. Although he _constantly_ tries to sit beside Sara, Sara always shakes her head and tells him to make friends, leaving him to slink away dejectedly.

“My brother and I have paranoid personality disorder,” she confides matter-of-factly. “I think that’s what drove us into our unhealthy codependency. I recently insisted that we come here, that we move past our toxic _‘us versus them’_ mentality. I think—we need some distance. We need to get out into the world, to stop isolating ourselves.”

Meanwhile, Leo makes fast friends with a young man named Guang Hong. They both enjoy food immensely, bonding over their love for dessert, milk tea, and Asian street food. After Yuri makes a modified version of his grandfather’s piroshki on the first day, they take over the kitchen, spending all their occupational therapy sessions baking increasingly elaborate desserts.

In the afternoons, volunteers come to do yoga with them in the common area. The sessions are easy enough, but the teacher soon notices Yuuri and Viktor snickering as they compete on stretches at the back, and comes over to teach them some of the more difficult positions.

“Ballet?” she asks, as she helps to bump Yuuri’s hips up— “Oooh, you’re bendy.”

“He’s still so young!” Viktor laments. “Unlike me! Ah, my old back! My old hips! My hips hurt!”

“Viktor,” Yuuri says unamusedly, glaring at Viktor from his upside-down position. “Your hips hurt because you’re sitting in an _oversplit.”_

They soon settle into helping each other with stretches after each session, giggling as they take turns to push and pull each other into each position.

“You’re _plenty_ flexible for someone who’s technically _retired,”_ Yuuri tells him.

They’re having fun, but perhaps, Yuuri soon realizes, a little too much fun. By the end of the week, Yuri seems to have finally endured all he can.

 _“Radi boga!”_ he bursts out from behind them, after an hour of what Yuuri can only admit has been _incessant_ giggling. “Will the two of you _stop flirting?!_ You are worse than a married couple! Can you save that for when I’m not here, or better yet—get a _goddamned room!_ ”

“We’re not flirting,” the two of them deny at once.

But later, alone in his room that night, Yuuri finds himself bolting upright, wide-eyed and wearing a look of abject horror.

 _I_ was _flirting with him,_ he realizes, dismayed.

 

* * *

 

By the next morning, Yuuri is decided.

So yes, maybe they’ve been having a little too much fun. And yes, perhaps Yuuri _is_ developing a little bit of a crush on Viktor. A tiny one. A _teeny tiny_ crush. The truth is that he’s never really been properly interested in anyone, and so hadn’t noticed the early warning signs right away. But still, this doesn’t have to be a problem. Nope. All he has to do is just ignore his feelings, and they’ll _eventually_ have to go away, right? Isn’t that how crushes work?

Unfortunately, he soons find that ignoring that flutter in his stomach, that clenching in his chest, that _warmth_ that fills him up from the inside like a slow sunrise, like a warm wave washing over the beach—

It’s _much_ easier said than done.

Once the initial realization is through, it’s like he can’t stop noticing the telltale warming of his traitorous heart. He feels it when Leo’s sister arrives over the weekend, when he steals the last empanada while Viktor is fighting Yuri over it, and when Viktor rises, indignant, to chase him around the table. He feels it in the laughter bursting from them, bright, high, and in his case, muffled by the empanada in his mouth.

Ah, he thinks.

There goes his traitorous heart, beating, and _god,_ how it beats.

Yuri has his head in his hands at the table, but Yuuri can’t stop himself from biting the empanada into half, from turning, mid-chase, to stuff the other half into Viktor’s laughing mouth.

When had this heart become so disobedient?

 

* * *

 

It all comes to a head very quickly.

Monday comes, along with volunteers from a nearby dance academy. All the tables have been cleared from the dining area in East Wing, leaving a broad expanse of tiled floor, lit by the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the courtyard of the hospital.

While the rest of the patients follow along to the steps of a slow line dance, Viktor and Yuuri sneak in pirouettes at the back. Viktor kicks his leg up high, and Yuuri darts under it, swapping places before the instructor can notice, like some sort of childish game. As the afternoon wanes on, the room begins to glow with a sunset brilliance. They carry on with their game, but the instructors just leave them alone with a laugh, even as they find themselves getting sucked into some kind of truncated duet, giggling non-stop, with decreasing subtlety.

Then the class ends, and the rest of the patients begin to mill away. Alone on the vast floor, lit up like twin fires against the floor-to-ceiling windows, they finally fall properly into the dance they had begun, spinning and kicking, arching and leaping. Laughter bubbles uncontrollably from Yuuri, warming him up from the inside, and Viktor’s eyes are just as bright as he pulls Yuuri in, guiding him into the first steps of a quick-stepped paso doble.

And although the room is silent then, Yuuri can hear his heart singing, filling in the symphony against the rhythm of their feet. His heart beats traitorously. His heart soars, free. His heart is so much bolder than he dares to be. They twirl around the room, laughing, until the room begins to turn dark and they finally have to part. If they delay their return to Crisis Treatment any longer, the orderly will come looking for them. Yuri stomps the entire way back, retreating into his room without a word to them, only a pointed glare. A chuckling Leo goes too, leaving them alone in the common area.

Viktor pulls Yuuri into his darkened room, and they sit opposite one another on the bed. The whites of their eyes gleam in the light from the hallway.

“Why _didn’t_ you become a dancer?” Viktor asks, wonderingly.

“I wanted to for a long time,” Yuuri admits. “But when I found out about the operation that ruined Minako-sensei’s life, I found another calling.”

He chuckles, the sound an empty one.

“I guess I’ve failed at that calling,” Yuuri whispers.

“Yuuri,” Viktor murmurs, chidingly. “I’m sure you’re being too hard on yourself.”

“I’m not,” Yuuri protests, and smiles sadly. “I've killed someone, Viktor. I’ve felt the slowing pulse of a man’s internal organs as his life ebbed away beneath my hands, and I knew then that I could not let it happen a second time. I swore that these hands would never hurt, that they would only heal. I withdrew from my residency after that, and then— I tried to throw myself into the St. Lawrence.”

Viktor shifts closer, holding Yuuri’s hands in both of his, his blue eyes carrying a deep sadness. Yuuri huffs out a pained laugh.

“Do you think I’m pathetic?”

Viktor recoils.

“Of course not!” he denies immediately. Then, he chuckles, combing a hand back through his hair. “I guess you don’t remember,” he murmurs to himself, so quietly that Yuuri doubts he’d even heard correctly.

“What?” Yuuri asks.

Viktor shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says, and then squeezes Yuuri’s hands in his. “Has anyone told you how I ended up in psych this time?”

“No,” Yuuri admits.

“I took off all my clothes, threw them into the St. Lawrence, and then I climbed the Jacques Cartier Bridge and sat there doing back stretches until I was arrested and brought here.”

Yuuri’s mouth falls open, and seeing his expression, Viktor laughs.

“Do you think I’m pathetic, Yuuri?”

“No,” Yuuri says, without even having to think about it.

Viktor smiles. “I’m bipolar,” he explains. “Sometimes I feel invincible, on top of the world, like I can do anything and like I’m full of ideas. It helps on occasion, of course. The creative spurts are always nice. But the higher I get, the harder fall once the depression hits. It runs in the family. My father was a circus musician. He took his life during an artistic slump when I was just a child.”

“I’m really sorry,” Yuuri responds immediately, horrified.

“It’s alright,” Viktor says, chuckling. “I barely knew him. My mother raised me single-handedly. Things got dark for her for a while after my dad died, but she got better after we moved to Montreal. St. Petersburg reminded her too much of him, I think. She started to smile again after we moved here. She started to sing again, started to dance me around the kitchen in the mornings like she used to, back when dad was still alive. We moved back to St. Petersburg again after living here for a couple years, but I came back here after she died, chasing the memory of that happiness.“

And then he chuckles, the sound a little choked.

“Montreal is lonely without her,” he admits, his whisper so small, so vulnerable, that Yuuri just has to pull him into a hug.

Viktor buries his face in Yuuri’s shoulder, inhaling shakily, and they stay like that for long minutes, pressed chest to chest in the darkness. Yuuri can feel the comforting beat of Viktor’s heart against his own in the quiet, like the beat of a song calling him home. Finally, Viktor turns his face, lips mere centimeters from Yuuri’s ear.

“Dance with me?” he whispers.

“There’s not enough space,” Yuuri protests, even as he stands, pulling Viktor up with him.

“Like this,” Viktor murmurs, slipping his arms around Yuuri’s waist. “Follow my lead.”

And they dance again, slowly this time, even more closely than they had danced before. Viktor rests his cheek against the top of Yuuri’s head as they sway together, and begins to sing. Softly, he sings. Yuuri finds himself closing his eyes, letting the foreign words wash over him without comprehending. He has been in Montreal for long enough to recognize that the words are French, but not long enough to understand them. They sway together to the languid melody until the song draws slowly to a close. At the end of the song, Viktor pulls back, and Yuuri opens his eyes.

Viktor’s eyes are unbearably blue, even in the darkness, even as he leans in, finally, and presses their lips together. And how Yuuri’s traitorous heart beats, how it soars, bolder than he dares to be, compelling him to close his eyes, to tilt his head, and to melt into the kiss with just a sigh.

“Viktor,” he whispers.

“Hush,” Viktor pleads. “Just kiss me, Yuuri, please.”

And so Yuuri does.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, he wakes up with dread curling, cold, in his gut.

 

* * *

 

The truth is that Yuuri has always been like this, hot one day, and then cold another, taking one step forward, and then another step back. He sees how Viktor looks at him, like Yuuri’s the sun, live-giving, and brighter than anything he’s ever seen—and it frightens him. There’s going to be a day, he knows, where Viktor is going to look at him and finally see him for what he really is.

Undeserving.

A mistake.

He pulls back that first morning, pretending like they hadn’t shared what they had the night before. By the afternoon, however, he finds his fingers curling around Viktor’s when Viktor reaches for him during the dance activity. He can’t help himself. How could he ever resist Viktor? At dinner, he swaps seats with Yuri, separating himself from Viktor for the first time since being warded. He feels like shit the whole time.

It continues like this for the next few days, one step forward, one step back. And yet, Viktor remains patient, remains smiling, going along with whatever Yuuri’s mood seems to be for the day, never complaining.

By God, Yuuri doesn’t deserve him.

At the end of that third week, he wakes up in the middle of night, and is unable to go back to sleep, no matter how he tries. It is raining outside, thundering faintly. He just lies there, staring at the ceiling and listening to the rain fall. After an hour, he finally gets up and goes out to sit against the window, watching the cars go by, watching their headlights gleam off the wet asphalt. Inside the nurse station, Miss Carie looks up. After about a minute, she leaves the computer, pushing open the door and coming to sit at the table beside him.

“Can’t sleep?” she asks.

“No,” Yuuri admits.

She stands up and walks around the table to retrieve the deck of cards from on top of the fridge. She puts it down on the table between them. “How about this,” she begins. “I’ll give you something to help you sleep, and while we wait for it to take effect, we can play a round of Crazy Eights.”

Yuuri smiles. “Sure,” he agrees gladly.

She goes back into the nurse station for a moment, and comes back out with a pill and a cup of water. Yuuri swallows the pill, then hops down the ledge to sit opposite her at the table. She deals out the cards, and they play a round.

“You’ve really opened up since you first arrived here,” she notes. “I’m glad. When we received you that first night in the ER, you seemed so frightened, so resistant to being here. I was so worried, but look at you now. You’ve really settled in.”

With a jolt, Yuuri realizes that she must have been one of the nurses on shift when the police had brought him in.

“It’s all thanks to Viktor,” he says quickly. “He really did his best to make me feel at home here. I don’t think I would have been able to settle in like I have if he hadn’t been here.”

Miss Carie smiles fondly.

“He’s such an angel, isn’t he?” she asks.

“He is,” Yuuri agrees, absently putting down a card. Without even blinking, Miss Carie puts down all of her last three cards then, a set of three sixes. Yuuri sucks in a breath. “You’re _really_ good at this, Miss Carie.”

She laughs. “I’ve been playing this game since I was a little girl.”

Yuuri reaches out and begins to collate all the cards.

“Another round?” he asks.

“Of course.”

Since he lost, Yuuri shuffles the deck, and deals out the cards for the next round. He does not speak again until they are a good ways into the game.

“Viktor kissed me,” he confesses quietly, “earlier this week.”

Miss Carie does not seem surprised. “And what do you think about that?” she asks.

“I don’t know what to think,” Yuuri admits.

She puts down a two.

“Draw two.” Yuuri does so while Miss Carie surveys her cards, rearranging them slightly. “Do you like him?” she asks off-handedly.

Yuuri chuckles.

“Perhaps a little too much,” he says.

Her eyes flick up to him at that.

“Why do you say that?”

Yuuri puts down a pair of eights, considering his next words carefully.

“Anxiety,” he finally begins, slowly, “has always been a part of my life. I doubt myself constantly, sabotaging all my relationships, and isolating myself as I go. I’m afraid that it’ll happen again. No, I _know_ it will happen again, and—Viktor just doesn’t deserve to deal with the fallout of that. He deserves someone who’s going to treat him right, who is as bright, and who shines as brilliantly as he does, even in darkness. He deserves better than—“

Yuuri chuckles, and gestures to himself.

Miss Carie spends the next few seconds just slowly rearranging her cards, looking like she is considering her words carefully.

“Well,” she says finally, with a little chuckle. “I don’t know if that is true, Mr. Katsuki, but what does _Viktor_ want?”

Yuuri opens his mouth, and then closes it again after a moment.

Miss Carie looks up at him. “Don’t you think that matters too?” she probes.

When Yuuri doesn’t immediately reply, she clears her throat, and slowly sets down a jack of spades. “Skip your turn,” she announces, and then sets down a pair of queens, one of spades, and one of hearts, leaving her with only one card.

“Life is full of choices,” she continues casually, as Yuuri begins to examine his cards frantically, trying to figure out which one is the right one to play. “Most of the time, these are choices that can go well, but that can also go badly. Sometimes, it’s scary to try at all, knowing that it could just go horribly, horribly wrong, or that all that effort may simply take you nowhere.”

There’s only one card he can play, a three of hearts, and he sets it down between them. Miss Carie glances at it, and then smiles.

“But sometimes,” she continues, sliding her last card across the table and into his hand, “you need to put yourself out there to discover the things that really matter in life.”

He looks down into his hand, and chuckles, impressed.

An ace of hearts. Of course.

At that moment, there is a quiet knock, and they both turn around to see someone standing at the glass of the nurse station from the East Wing side. Miss Carie stands up, pausing briefly to put a hand over his.

“You go and think about that. Alright, Mr. Katsuki?” she asks kindly.

“Alright,” Yuuri agrees quietly.

She goes back into the nurse station to attend to the other patient, and Yuuri retreats back into his room. He sits at his desk, watching the cars go by from his window until the medication finally begins to take effect. He flips back the covers, and climbs into bed, closing his eyes.

Just as he’s about to drop off to sleep, he hears a sound like a door creaking open.

Footsteps pad quietly down the hallway. A moment later, someone begins to speak, the voice so soft that he cannot make out who it belongs to. Yuuri opens his eyes, staring up at the dark ceiling. His curiosity quickly gets the better of him, and he gets out of bed, padding to his door and peering out.

Georgi is sitting in front of the landline again, this time speaking quietly into the receiver. At first, Yuuri thinks that his ex must have finally picked up, despite the odd hour. As Georgi’s words register, however, the truth dawns on him.

“I’m moving on,” Georgi is saying lowly into the phone. “I don’t know what any of this meant to you, Anya, but— I will keep these memories. I won’t forget what you did, but still, I will move on. I will live. That’s all I wanted to say.”

He’s leaving a goodbye message.

He presses a key, and then puts the receiver down. He sits there for a moment, putting his face in his hands, before finally standing up.

“Georgi,” Yuuri speaks quietly, from the doorway.

Georgi looks up. He looks—tired, _exhausted_ actually, but he smiles faintly at the sight of Yuuri.

“You did it,” Yuuri says proudly.

“I did,” he agrees, his smile widening into something bittersweet. “I was stuck in a really deep pit this time, and had really been considering ending it all.”

“Georgi,” Yuuri whispers sadly.

“I could see it in your eyes as well,” Georgi continues, lowering his eyes to his twisting hands. “Back when you first came into the ward, I could tell that you were the same as me.” He chuckles. “But something’s changed, hasn’t it? For the both of us.”

Yuuri does not answer, but Georgi does not seem to need an answer. After a moment, he looks up again, meeting Yuuri’s eyes seriously. “I still don’t know for sure that there won’t be a day where I’ll run out of the strength needed to continue fighting,” he tells Yuuri solemnly, “but—I have decided that that day isn’t today. Even if only for awhile, I want to see the sun again. I want to feel it on my skin. I want to breathe in the sea-salt smell of the river down by the old port. I want to see the lights of the city gleaming off the waters. There’s beauty in the world around us. I haven’t quite finished seeing everything I want to see.”

Yuuri closes his eyes, and nods, throat aching strangely.

“I’m going to try,” Georgi tells him, and laughs sadly. “For that chance to see the sun again, I will try.”

And smiling, Yuuri opens his eyes.

“I’m glad for you, Georgi,” he whispers.

A tired smile breaks across Georgi’s face. Nodding gratefully towards Yuuri, he turns, continues down the hallway, and then vanishes into his room. The door clicks quietly shut behind him.

After a moment, Yuuri closes the door, and heads back to bed.

When he wakes in the morning, Viktor is sitting alone at the table, shuffling the deck of cards slowly. He looks up at the sound of footsteps, and smiles as he spots Yuuri approaching. An answering smile rises naturally to Yuuri’s face as he sits down beside Viktor, as he reaches out, and lays his hand over Viktor’s on the table. Viktor’s eyes widen.

“What does this mean, Yuuri?” he asks softly, like he doesn’t quite dare to believe it.

 _For the chance to see the sun,_ Yuuri thinks, and leans forward to kiss Viktor.

It is gentle, and soft, and good. It is a sun is rising inside of his chest—warm, and full of quiet, endless beginnings.

He breathes a sigh against Viktor’s lips, and smiles.

 

* * *

 

Being by Viktor’s side, he finds after that, is like basking in the sun. It fills him with so much warmth and so much life. They ease into this new love slowly, holding hands under the table, trading tender looks when no one is looking, and dancing together in the dead of night. Viktor will often sing quietly to Yuuri then, always the same song, the one he’d sang the first time they had danced together.

“My mother used to sing this song to me all the time,” he explains when Yuuri asks. “She said that it expressed how she felt about me. Now, it expresses the way I feel about you, so I want to sing it to you like how she sang it to me.”

Yuuri has to bury his face into Viktor’s shoulder.

“Do you miss her?” he asks, after a moment.

Viktor nods.

“So much it hurts to even think about it,” he admits.

Yuuri presses a comforting kiss against Viktor’s shoulder, and Viktor pulls back a little to look him in the eye.

“Do you miss your family, Yuuri?”

“More than words can say,” Yuuri says.

“You should call them.”

Yuuri falters. After a moment, he chuckles, the sound a little strained, and shrugs. “I don’t have an international calling card,” he says.

Viktor’s face falls, and Yuuri’s heart falls along with it. Smiling, he quickly changes the topic to a happier one. “What does that song mean?” he asks instead.

Viktor seems vaguely embarrassed by the question.

“It’s just an old French love song,” he dismisses.

As the rotation cycle drags on, a couple of them are reassigned to medical students instead. Yuuri, in particular, gets reassigned to an excitable, enthusiastic young man named Minami Kenjirou. What immediately strikes him from the first day is just how much _time_ Minami spends with him, compared to his previous doctor. Where he’d barely seen his doctor in all the time he’s been here, Minami comes like clockwork every single day, and spends nearly half an hour with Yuuri each time.

Minami lights up when he hears that Yuuri had been a resident with Celestino.

“I’m hoping to be accepted into a surgery residency too!” he admits. “But I know those are really competitive.”

The difference, Yuuri soon realizes, is that Minami sees him as more than a patient. He sees Yuuri as the person that he is.

“You’re so strong!” he tells Yuuri one time. “I think it’s amazing what you’ve achieved while struggling with all this!”

His illness, his anxiety, which Yuuri has always seen as a weakness, Minami somehow sees as something that makes him strong. Yuuri is still unsure what to make of that. It’s a little baffling, honestly, even though it warms him to hear it.

Meanwhile, Yuri and Leo have also been reassigned to a medical student, a young Kazakhstani man named Otabek. Like Minami, Otabek spends a much greater amount of time with them. The young medical student is incredibly meticulous, taking to his responsibilities with utmost seriousness, and while the young man is careful to provide equal care for both patients, Yuuri can see a genuine friendship forming between him and Yuri. Increasingly, Yuuri will observe Otabek approaching Yuri to talk during occupational therapy, or when Yuri is sitting alone in the common area. Yuri always lights up during those conversations, gesturing animatedly, and laughing.

Yuuri is glad. He gets the feeling that Yuri doesn’t have many friends his own age.

It would be unrealistic to expect life in the ward to always stay the same, and yet, change, when it comes, surprises Yuuri more than it probably should have. Nearing the end of Yuuri’s first month in Crisis Treatment, Leo clears his throat at breakfast one day, and stands, looking solemn.

“Today is actually going to be my last day in Crisis Treatment,” he announces. “Otabek thinks I’m recovering well, and has decided to move me out into East Wing tomorrow.”

A round of collective _awwws_ go around the table.

“Who’s going to protect me from the Yuris during Crazy Eights now?” Viktor laments.

Leo laughs.

“I’ll still see you all at community meetings and occupational therapy,” he protests.

“If you and Guang Hong can tear yourselves away from the oven for a bit, we can play a few rounds of Crazy Eights during occupational therapy,” Yuuri teases.

“I’ll make the time,” Leo promises, with a grin.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Leo is moved into East Wing, and JJ and moved into Crisis Treatment, much to Yuri’s chagrin.

“You!” he cries, when JJ is escorted through the doors by an orderly. “Of all people they could have moved in here, it had to be you!”

“Missed me?” JJ asks, with a wink.

“No,” Yuri says flatly.

Yuuri cuts in then, confused. “But why did they move you in here?”

JJ finally looks a little sheepish.

“I may have egged someone in East Wing on a little too much,” he admits. “We got into a fight.”

“I’m just surprised it didn’t happen sooner,” Yuri deadpans. “Some people are just born with faces that are meant to be punched.”

“Is that how you ended up in here?” JJ teases back. “You looked in a mirror and had to punch it?”

“Fuck off!”

They continue snarking at each other for the rest of the day. After that, JJ becomes a regular face in the common room, joining them for Crazy Eights, and constantly riling Yuri up. They keep on trying to sabotage each other during the games, which Viktor finds incredibly entertaining. Yuuri has to admit that it _is_ amusing to watch. Their games have certainly become livelier, _rowdier._

At the end of the week, they finally meet Isabella, JJ’s fiancée. JJ is over the moon, gushing about her to anyone who will listen, while Isabella just smiles and laughs behind a perfectly manicured hand. Eventually, the doctor calls for him, and they both go in. Yuuri watches them talk to the doctor through the glass, holding hands, and nodding attentively—the very picture of a doting couple. Yuri is making gagging noises beside him.

When they come out, Viktor stops Isabella before she can leave.

“I heard you’re expecting!” he cries cheerfully. “Congratulations! How many months along are you now?”

 _Ah_ , Yuuri thinks fondly. _There’s the angel I know._

He and JJ sit down at the table next to a scowling Yuri while the two engage in small talk.

“You look a lot better than you did in the ER,” JJ observes happily. “I didn’t expect that, but I’m definitely glad for you!”

“I’ve been feeling a lot better,” Yuuri agrees, and smiles. “Thank you for the advice you gave me. I think I didn’t fully understand it then, but it has been incredibly helpful to me since.”

JJ seems vaguely surprised at that. “You’re welcome,” he says, smiling.

“And how have you been doing?” Yuuri asks in return.

JJ grins.

“Well enough, I think,” he answers. “I’ve always had trouble controlling my bipolar tendencies, and have been in and out of this hospital for a long time. Each time was involuntary. This time is the first time I checked myself in, and I think that has made a difference.”

“Oh?” Yuuri asks.

JJ chuckles.

“I never wanted to be here in the past,” he admits. “I would just go through the motions of life in the ward, waiting for the latest episode to end, so that my doctor could discharge me. Eventually, however, my condition would flare up again, and I’d just find myself right back in here all over again.”

He turns then, looking to Isabella with a gentle smile. She doesn’t seem to notice, still engaged in conversation with an enthusiastic Viktor, but his eyes are unbearably, unbearably soft.

“When Isabella told me she was expecting,” he continues, “I knew something had to change, and so, for the first time, I’m determined to make the most of my time here. I’m not just going to go through the motions again. I’m going to play an active role in my own recovery, and hopefully, when I’m discharged this time, it will finally be for good. I want to be a good father to my child. I want to be a good husband to Isabella. And that means I can’t keep letting my illness take me from them for months on end while I’m in here. I’ve already missed the first half of Isabella’s first trimester. I don’t want to miss her second trimester, her third, the birth of my child. I don’t want to miss my child’s first words, her first steps, her first smile. I don’t want to lose her childhood to my illness. I want to be fully present in both of their lives, and that means that I need to try harder than I’ve ever tried in my life. I need to change.”

JJ looks down at his hands, folded together on the table, smiling wistfully, and Yuuri finds himself reaching out to lay a hand over his.

“I think you’re already a better father and a better husband than you give yourself credit for,” he tells JJ quietly. “Nevertheless, I wish you the best of luck in your recovery.”

And JJ’s face— _lights up._

“Thank you,” he says sincerely. “That really means a lot to me. _Thank you._ ”

Finally, Viktor and Isabella’s conversation draws to a close. Isabella comes around the table to share a goodbye kiss with JJ, before the orderly escorts her out of the ward. JJ goes back into his room, whistling, leaving Yuuri alone with Yuri and Viktor in the common area. For the first time then, Yuuri notices the thoughtful expression on Yuri’s face, his eyes far away as he frowns down at the table.

“What’s wrong?” Yuuri asks.

Yuri startles.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says quickly. “I was just thinking.”

Yuuri doesn’t get the chance to probe further, because Minami sticks his head out of the nurse station right then, smiling.

“Katsuki-kun!” he calls. “You’re up next!”

Yuuri gets up and heads into the nurse station. Minami is sitting at one of the tables, where he has been writing diligently in Yuuri’s file for the past fifteen minutes. He draws up one of the rolling office chairs for Yuuri to sit in, and smiles welcomingly.

“So, how have you been feeling, Katsuki-kun?” he asks. “Has it been difficult to adjust to Leo-kun’s departure from the ward?”

“We miss him, definitely,” Yuuri says, “but it’s alright. JJ has been a really positive presence in the ward. I think it’s great. He reminds me of Leo actually. You can tell how much the both of them care about their families.”

“We learnt in school that family support significantly improves the chances of long term recovery, especially when families get involved in long term care of a patient,” Minami chirps. “That’s why we really encourage family members to get involved and to come for doctor’s appointments, just like how Isabella sits in!”

“I remember learning that,” Yuuri says, amused at Minami’s enthusiasm. It’s very endearing.

“Oh!” Minami cries, perking up. “I had forgotten to ask. Have you recently been in contact with your family, Katsuki-kun?”

Yuuri’s smile fades slightly.

“I haven’t,” he admits.

Minami clenches both fists, bringing them up in a gesture of encouragement. His face is set almost comically into a look of solemn determination.

“Katsuki-kun!” he cries. “I would really encourage you to call them! As I said, family support really improves the odds of long term recovery! You should talk about your long term care options with your family!”

“They are too far away to really get involved in my care,” Yuuri tries to defer.

“Just having emotional support is good too!” Minami declares enthusiastically. “I’m sure they’re missing you too, Katsuki-kun, so call them when you next have the time, alright?”

Yuuri leaves the nurse station soon after that, troubled. Viktor seems to notice at once, because he jumps to his feet with a look of concern.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

Yuuri just shakes his head.

“Minami advised me to call my family,” he says, and then sighs, rubbing tiredly at his face with both hands. He’s really not ready for this, but Minami is right that he needs to call them soon. He’s never been one to call everyday, but it’s been _months_ since they’ve last heard from him. If he doesn’t call soon, they are going to begin worrying, and he doesn’t want that. That’s the last thing he wants.

When he finally looks up, exhaling heavily, Viktor face is arranged into a concerned frown. He steps in close and slides a comforting arm around Yuuri’s waist, pressing a kiss to Yuuri’s shoulder before speaking again.

“Don’t worry,” he soothes, with a soft smile. “Everything will work itself out soon, okay?”

And although Yuuri does find that statement a little odd, he does not pursue the matter further. The next week, however, he quickly finds out just what Viktor had meant by those words.

Isabella comes again in the middle of the week, and this time, she brings an international calling card with her. Viktor looks on with a proud grin as she hands the card over to Yuuri, and Yuuri realizes what Viktor must have been planning, why he had stopped her that day, and what they must have been talking about.

“I heard you haven’t been able to get in contact with your family,” Isabella tells him, with a sympathetic expression. “I hope this will help you.”

Yuuri takes the card from her with an empty smile.

“Thank you,” he says. “I’m sure it will.”

Inside, he just feels numb.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The posting of next week's chapter is probably going to be delayed as my finals end on Thursday. While this work IS complete, I'm not entirely satisfied with the next chapter, and dislike posting work that isn't satisfactory. In any case, the next chapter definitely needs some reworking that has to wait until my finals are over.


	4. je me fous du passé!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Sorry for going off-schedule. I was sick for a period of about two weeks after finals ended, then my results came out and I was depressed for a number of weeks after that. I don't have bad grades, no worries. I just missed first class by 0.01. I also have pretty intense depressions so I was 50% bedridden for a bit.
> 
> The good news is I'm back now and hoping to upload the rest in a timely manner. It's already written, just needs some edits, but when I'm depressed no amount of editing ever seems to make it okay to post. Sorry again for the long wait.

After Isabella leaves for the night, Yuuri makes his excuses, retreats into his room, and sits down on the edge of his bed. For a few long moments, he stares numbly down at the print along the back of the card, eyes tracing slowly along the instructions for use, but not processing them. Finally, he buries his hands in his face, and just  _ breathes. _

A warm hand brushes soothingly over his back, and he looks up to see Viktor’s concerned face. There is confusion etched clearly in the furrow of his brow, in the way he gnaws at his bottom lip as he crouches down in front of Yuuri, looking up at him with an almost beseeching look.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

A self-deprecating chuckle bursts from Yuuri. Shaking his head, he reaches out to cup Viktor’s face with a bittersweet smile.

“You’re too good for me,” he whispers.

“But I’ve made you unhappy,” Viktor points out miserably.

“It’s not you,” Yuuri denies, and then chuckles again, bitterly. “It’s  _ me.  _ It— It wasn’t the lack of a calling card that was stopping me from calling them, Viktor. It was  _ me  _ who was stopping myself _.  _ How do I admit to them how far I’ve fallen? How do I admit to them what I’ve become?”

Viktor tilts his chin up, pressing his lips firmly against Yuuri’s jaw.

“Do you really think they would judge you?” he asks. “From what you’ve said of them, Yuuri, I think they will just want to support you the best they can. I really think that.”

“Maybe I  _ don’t  _ want them to support me,” Yuuri snaps, and pauses, heart constricting painfully in his chest. “Maybe what I  _ really _ wanted was to prove that I could become someone  _ worthwhile _ . And for awhile, it really felt like I  _ was. _ But I’m not anymore, and I just—”

His voice breaks.

“I never want to stop being that promising, high-achieving Yuuri in their eyes,” he whispers. “I really don’t.”

A tear slips down his face, and he closes his eyes, breath hitching as something like grief crests abruptly over him. Viktor immediately stands, distressed, and pulls Yuuri into his arms.

“Oh, Yuuri,” he whispers, stricken. “It’s okay. I’m so sorry. If you’re not ready to talk to them, then you don’t have to talk to them. I’m really sorry. Please don’t cry. I don’t know what to do.”

And Yuuri pulls himself together enough to smile up at Viktor.

“Sing that song,” he pleads, “and just hold me, please.”

The tears resume again, and he has to put his face in his hands this time.

“Alright,” Viktor agrees, frazzled. “Alright, I can do that.”

At Viktor’s urging, they begin to navigate themselves under the covers, Viktor pulling Yuuri to lie in his arms as they settle face to face. Lips pressed against Yuuri’s hair, Viktor begins to sing a familiar song—  _ their _ song, the song that Viktor has always sung to him. Already exhausted by his moment of emotionality, Yuuri quickly finds himself being lulled to sleep by the melody.

As the minutes tick by, he slips under to the sound of Viktor’s singing.  


 

* * *

 

He dreams.

He dreams of the first time he’d tried to drown himself in the St. Lawrence river— the night he’d withdrawn from medical school.

Curled up on a bench by the waters, the world had tilted and turned around him dizzyingly as he had cried quietly to himself. He had hovered strangely between sleep and waking for long hours. The sounds of a gentle voice, a familiar song, had woven in and out of his drunken dreams, along with the sensation of gentle fingers in his hair, the recognition of a gentle presence seated on the bench by his head.

_ What happened to you?  _ a voice had asked him sadly.

He had opened his eyes to the glare of the rising sun, dancing off the surface of the water. Blinded and dazzled, he remembers turning his head, remembers looking up, remembers seeing eyes like the summer sky, and hair that seemed to be made of light itself. Radiant. Otherworldly.

A guardian angel.

The world had begun to fade slowly around him, and just before everything had gone black, a thought had come to him unbidden—

_ Perhaps… _

_ This might just be a good omen. _

 

* * *

 

When he wakes up, the first thing he sees is Viktor’s face, peaceful in the morning light, and his hair, spilling out over the pillow like liquid light.

_ Like the angel of my dreams,  _ he muses sleepily.

Somehow, the thought fills him with a strange sort of strength.

He goes out into the common area with the calling card, and dials the series of numbers on the back of the card, before keying his sister’s number in. He sits down at the table as the phone begins to ring, drawing in a deep, calming breath.

Mari answers after a few rings.

_ “Moshi moshi?” _ she asks, after a moment of silence.

The sound of his mother tongue strikes him somewhere deep. It’s like coming home. He closes his eyes.

_ “Nee-san,” _ he manages to choke out,  _ “it’s me.” _

An intake of breath. 

_ “Yuuri?” _ Mari demands, incredulously. “We’ve been calling your phone for about a week now! What happened to your phone? We’d even been thinking of calling your university to ask where you went! Wait, let me call for  _ kaa-san _ and  _ tou-san.” _

_ “No!” _ Yuuri jumps in desperately. “Please don’t. You can tell them what happened later, but I’m not ready to tell them myself.”

He looks at the clock on the wall and does some mental calculation. It’s evening in Japan.

“I’m—” he begins, and bites his lip. “I’ve been hospitalized. I’m calling from the hospital. They confiscated my phone when I was checked in. This ward doesn’t allow us to use communicative devices.”

Mari does not say anything.

“It’s a psychiatric ward,” Yuuri explains, voice small.

Another moment of silence. Then, he hears Mari breathe out slowly.

“Oh, Yuuri,” she whispers. “We had always thought that this might happen one day, but we worried that you would be too ashamed to tell us. I’m so, so glad you trusted me enough to call.”

And he can’t help himself. Tears immediately begin to fall, his chest tightening in something like relief, and something like grief.

“I have so much to tell you,  _ nee-san,”  _ he cries. “I really miss you all.”

By the time Viktor comes out of his room, Yuuri is laughing over the phone as Mari tells him about the triplets’ latest antics. Viktor sits down beside him with a smile, saying nothing, and Yuuri reaches out to hold his hand even as he continues to talk to his sister. It’s been a long time since he’d been able to speak in his mother tongue, and it feels freeing,  _ effortless. _

Mari has to hang up soon after that. He puts down the phone, and turns to Viktor.

“That was my sister,” he explains, and Viktor’s face lights up.

“You speak in a lower tone when you’re speaking in Japanese,” Viktor observes.

Yuuri laughs. A wave of fondness bubbles up inside him, and he throws his arms around Viktor, kissing him briefly on the cheek.

“Thank you,” he says simply.

And Viktor’s face softens.

“You’re welcome,” he responds.

 

* * *

 

Over the next few weeks, calls from Japan begin steadily trickling in for him. It happens slowly, in a stepped process that makes him think that they’ve discussed this. They are probably trying not to overwhelm him. The thought warms him on the inside, but also brings a vague sense of shame. They are trying  _ so hard, _ and on some level he knows he needs them to, knows that he’s still fragile, but on another level he wishes that he didn’t need this.

Yuuko is the first to call after Mari. They spend the call talking about the triplets, talking about the new students that have come to the rink, and a little girl that they are hoping to send to regionals in a few years time. They do not talk about the hospital. They do not talk about his residency.

Minako is the next to call, and she is less diplomatic, more straightforward. Yuuri doesn’t think Minako really has it in her to skirt around the topic the way Yuuko does.

“You were being too hard on yourself, weren’t you?” she states, flatly, the moment he takes the phone from the nurse.

“Hello, Minako-sensei,” he says mildly.

She heaves a sigh. 

“Yuuri!” she groans. “When will you learn to see just how talented you are? I’m not just saying this because you’re my favorite student. You’re my favorite student for a reason! Now, I’m not a doctor or anything, but I do know that if there’s one thing that a person needs to succeed at anything, it’s determination, and you have  _ so much of that.  _ Yuuri, you are the most determined person I know, and…”

She goes on like this for another five minutes, and it’s— it’s heartwarming. 

It’s refreshing.

His parents only call in the second week. The moment he hears his mother’s voice, he bursts into tears.

“Oh, Yuuri,” his mother soothes immediately, sounding stricken. “Should I not have called? Do you need more time?”

“No,” he sobs, “I just missed you,  _ kaa-san.  _ I really did.”

He tells her  _ everything.  _ It’s like once he’s started, he can’t stop. It pours out of him in an emotional torrent, leaving him feeling vaguely drained when it’s all over, like he’s been turned inside out, scrubbed, and left out to dry— wrung out, definitely, but also…  _ clean. _

It’s like after that first emotional outpouring, he can begin with them again on a blank slate. They talk about things at the  _ onsen,  _ about Yuuko’s kids, about Minako’s ballet studio, and it no longer feels like they are skirting around a delicate topic, no longer feels awkward. They do not ask him to share anything, allowing him to share whenever he’s ready. Mostly, however, he shares about his time in the ward, about the friends he’s made, about  _ Viktor. _

“Let me talk to him,” Minako demands immediately.

“No,” Yuuri says.

“Just for a while,” Minako haggles. “Five minutes.”

“I’m not letting you scare him off, Minako-sensei,” Yuuri says sternly.

“I wouldn’t!”

Viktor usually sits beside him during his calls, head pillowed in his arms and smiling faintly up at him. After a while, Yuuri begins to loop Viktor in on his conversations, telling him about the antics of the triplets, or some of the stranger guests at the  _ onsen,  _ laughing at some of Viktor’s quips or comments and conveying them to whoever is on the line.

The first time he hears  _ Vicchan  _ slip off his mother’s tongue, so natural, so fond, and tinted with the warmth of her laughter — it’s like something slots into place inside him.

It feels  _ right. _

Surrounded by his family, by the people he’d grown up around, however, something else is rekindling within him. It sparks when Minako complains of the pain in her arm — it’s been raining lately, and the humidity always hurts her. Listening to her talk about the ballet studio, all he can recall is how her career had been cut short. Listening to her speak so fondly of the more passionate dancers under her care, all he can think about is how her passion, her talent, and her dreams had come to such an ill-timed end.

And he remembers.

He remembers how he’d wanted to make lives better, how he had laboured, training his hands to take apart a human body, but only to fix — never to break. He remembers how he had sworn himself to a life of healing. He had wanted to save lives.

“I still want to,” he confides in Viktor one night.

Viktor turns over to look at him, hair fanned out over the pillow and glowing faintly in the light from the hallway, the whites of his eyes gleaming.

“Do you want to go back to your residency programme, then?” Viktor asks.

“I’m scared,” Yuuri admits.

“I think you’re treating yourself too harshly, Yuuri,” Viktor whispers gently.

Yuuri closes his eyes.

“The chance of dying on the operating table in one in five hundred thousand,” he says. “What does that say about me, that someone died under my care less than a year into the job?”

He opens his eyes as Viktor takes his hand in his, pressing a kiss to his knuckles.

“It was a one-off incident, Yuuri,” he argues. “It wasn’t your fault, and even if it was, you can become  _ better.  _ You can move past it. I believe you can.”

It’s well-intentioned, and yet something about that statement rankles. Yuuri pulls his hand out of Viktor’s grip.

“How can I just  _ move past it?”  _ he asks. “How can I just  _ move on _ , knowing that the people who love him never will? I watched his wife break down in the waiting room, you know? I watched his three-year-old daughter cry for him, unable to comprehend the magnitude, the  _ permanence  _ of death. And the whole time, I just couldn’t stop thinking, what if—”   
  
His voice breaks.

“What if that man had been  _ my _ father instead?”

At that, the floodgates seem to open. The tears  _ pour _ , and this time, there’s no holding back, no pulling himself together. Viktor is making distressed noises, hands patting over Yuuri’s shoulders and face in something like comfort, but Yuuri just can’t reign in his tears even enough to say that he’s fine.

Then, Viktor laughs, nervously.

“God, I’m really bad with crying people,” he says lightly. “Can’t I just— kiss it all better or something?”

It’s well-intentioned, again, but just— just—

Yuuri pushes Viktor’s arms off him in a sudden burst of frustration, and stands up.

_ “No, you can’t!” _

The shout rings unbearably loud in his own ears. Viktor stares up at him with wide eyes, face frozen into an expression somewhere between fear and hurt, and Yuuri is filled abruptly with such a sense of shame. God, what is he  _ doing? _

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”

Viktor sits up, slipping his legs off the bed to sit at the edge of the mattress. He’s looking down at his hands now, avoiding Yuuri’s eyes, and worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth.

“No,” he says. “I’m sorry. I was being insensitive, wasn’t I?”

He takes a deep breath and looks up at Yuuri.

“I don’t know how to fix you, Yuuri,” he admits helplessly. “I don’t know what I can say to make this better.”

Yuuri closes his eyes.

“I don’t  _ need  _ you to fix me, Viktor,” he whispers, and chuckles dryly. “How can you fix me when I can’t even fix  _ myself?  _ You don’t have to say  _ anything. _ Just— just stay by my side. Please.”

Viktor’s face eases and he nods. Shifting forward, he takes Yuuri’s hands in both of his. “I love you, Yuuri,” he declares, “and I’ll love you no matter what’s going on inside your head, or outside of it, for that matter.”

Standing up, he puts Yuuri’s hands on his waist, kissing him chastely on the lips before beginning to sway them slowly from side to side. His low, gentle singing voice rumbles in Yuuri’s ear as he presses them chest to chest, slow dancing them tenderly around the room.

Yuuri closes his eyes, turns his cheek against Viktor’s shoulder, and just  _ breathes. _

 

* * *

 

When he wakes in the morning, Viktor is not beside him, but the warmth of the sheets tells him that he has not been gone for long. He gets up and heads out into the common area. Viktor is sitting against the window, looking out over the empty car park. It is still dark. The sun has not yet risen.

Viktor looks up as Yuuri seats himself on the ledge beside him.

“Thank you,” Yuuri whispers.

Viktor seems surprised.

“For what?” he asks.

“For being supportive,” Yuuri answers, and reaches out to put his hand over Viktor’s, swallowing nervously. “You’re right, you know?” he admits. “I need to start thinking seriously about sorting through my own emotional baggage, and I will. I promise.”

Viktor’s face softens, and he smiles.

“I’m proud of you, Yuuri,” he says tenderly.

 

* * *

 

When Minami calls him in that morning, he sits down, and launches straight into a monologue of all the things that have happened recently, his calls with his family, his rekindling interest in becoming a surgeon, his blow-up with Viktor, and broaches the possibility of seeking future treatment. It is only at the end of his rant that he notices the slightly dazed look on Minami’s face.

“Sorry,” Yuuri apologizes quickly. “That was a bit much, wasn’t it?”

“No, no,” Minami denies, just as quickly. “I was just—“ 

He takes a deep breath, blinking, and then folds himself abruptly into a bow.

“Thank you for trusting me with your story.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says. “Well, uh, you’re welcome?”

Minami straightens up, chuckling, and begins to rifle through Yuuri’s medical file. “Well, I  _ was _ going to broach this with you eventually,” he tells Yuuri cheerfully. “Yuuri-kun, have you ever considered talking to a therapist?”

“I’ve been considering that,” Yuuri agrees. ”McGill offers counseling services, so I was thinking of seeing one of their counselors.”

Minami pauses, and then nods, slowly.

“That’s a good start,” he begins, “but as a more long-term solution, have you ever considered going for  _ psychotherapy?” _

Yuuri frowns, trying to recall what he’d learnt in his introductory psychiatry course some three, four years ago? After a moment, he gives up. It’s been too long. 

“What’s the difference?”

“Counseling is usually more short-term,” Minami explains. “It addresses a recent event that is causing you stress. Psychotherapy is more long-term, and focuses more on attitudes or patterns of thought that have persisted in your life either due to a psychiatric condition or an incident in your early life. It is… less surface-level in that sense.”

Yuuri considers that for a moment. “I don’t think I need that,” he admits. “I think the problem I need to get over is—  _ that _ incident with my patient. I’ve had a good life, you know? My family and friends are great. My hometown is incredibly supportive. Comes with being a small town.”

Minami clears his throat.

“Well, as we learnt in intro,” he begins delicately, “mental illnesses can be caused by a mix of biological and environmental factors. For some people, environmental factors play a bigger role, such as when they are facing financial or relational difficulties, or have experienced childhood trauma. For others, genetics or neurology can result in abnormal mood despite a lack of external stressors. You, Yuuri-kun—“ He pauses, and coughs. “Well, you  _ do _ seem to exhibit a history of thought patterns that aren’t influenced  _ purely _ by your environment.”

Yuuri frowns. “And that means…?”

Minami inhales. “You have an anxiety disorder, Yuuri-kun,” he says flatly. “You have a tendency to catastrophize and think in absolutes, amongst other thought patterns characteristic of generalized anxiety. Those thought patterns were there even  _ before _ the… accident that brought you here. That’s not something counselling can treat, you know? You need cognitive behavioral therapy for that.”

Yuuri processes that. 

“I think I need to do more research,” he concludes finally.

Minami begins to nod so rapidly that he looks a little like a bobble-head doll. 

“I’m definitely not going to tell you that you’re not qualified to research your own care options!” he says, and chuckles. “I mean, you’re a medical student after all. I’m going to give you more computer time so that you can research. How does that sound?”

“That sounds great, actually,” Yuuri says. “Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

The next day, he goes out into the general ward and opens up a browser.

That officially begins a three-day long spiral down the black hole of academic articles on anxiety disorders, their causes, and clinical trials of various treatment options. 

Completely engrossed in his reading, he barely notices Viktor lolling around on the chair beside him, leaning back against Yuuri’s arm at times, turning around to rest his cheek on Yuuri’s shoulder at others, draping himself over the table eventually, and at some point, even coming to stand behind Yuuri with his arms looped loosely around Yuuri’s neck, swaying them absently from side to side. Yuuri barely even notices when Yuri comes to stand beside Viktor, raising an eyebrow.

“Is he still at it?”

“Yep.”

“Bozhe, what a nerd.”

“Yep.”

The thing about academic research, however, is that it is  _ never-ending _ , and so, he finally musters up the discipline on day three to pull himself out of Google Scholar, and into looking for  _ actual  _ therapists. Private therapy is— out of the question for him, at least not on a resident’s salary, but there  _ are _ options available to him under McGill’s psychiatric services. As he’s clicking through the McGill website on day four, Yuri plants his hand on the computer table, leaning over the side of the desk.

“So,” he begins, “you’ve been searching for therapists.”

Yuuri does not look up from the screen.

“Mmhm.”

Yuri turns around and sits on the edge of the table, folding his arms. 

“I’ve been…” he continues, somewhat grudgingly, “researching drug rehabilitation options as well.”

That finally makes Yuuri pause. He blinks, and then looks up at Yuri, surprised. Yuri huffs a little, still not meeting his eye.

“I guess what JJ said that time about going through the motions in here really stuck, okay?” he grumbles. “I realized I was doing it too, and that— that I’m not going to get better if I’m always just waiting on when I can convince my psych to let me out. Something needs to change.  _ I  _ need to change. I don’t know how I’m going to do that yet, but I guess I’m going to have to figure that out.”

Something in Yuuri’s chest is warming at the obstinate fold of Yuri’s arms, at his disgruntled face, ever so slightly flushed.

“Yuri,” he says softly.

Yuri rolls his eyes.

“No need to get so warm and fuzzy over me,” he grouses. “It’s no sob story. I’ve just never wanted to be here. Everytime I end up here, I just sit and wait to get out, only to go down the same spiral of drugs once I’m free. Then, I get the police called on me for a misdemeanor, again, end up back in here, _ again _ , and then I just sit down to wait, all over again! I’m sick of it! I’m never going to get better this way and— and you know what?! Perhaps I’ve realized that I actually  _ do _ want to get better, eventually. So there.”

Yuuri stands up, a grin all but splitting his face in two as he yanks the boy into a fierce hug. 

“I’m proud of you,” he says.

Closing his eyes, Yuri just drops his head back with a groan.

“And now you’re hugging me,” he complains.

But he does not struggle or push Yuuri away. He just stands there, unresistingly, in Yuuri’s arms. Yuuri cups a hand in blond hair, and pulls the boy’s face into his chest, resting his chin atop his crown.

“I’ve been talking to Leo about going into a rehab centre after this,” Yuri mutters into his shirt. “I’m not… I’m not good at all this research stuff. Not like you, and not like Leo. He’ll know better than me what options there are for us.”

Yuuri nods against the top of Yuri’s head.

“Maybe you should try therapy too,” he suggests.

Yuri heaves a deep, put-upon sigh.

“Ugh,” he intones. “That means I have to actually  _ talk _ to someone about my  _ feelings.” _

The retort is weak, however, and Yuuri only chuckles in response.

“Yes,” he says.

And Yuri heaves another deep, put-upon sigh.

_ “Ugh.” _

They soon find that they are not the only ones looking out for therapy options. At the end of the week, JJ speaks up proudly during one of their community meetings.

“My fiancé and I have signed up for a psychoeducation program together,” he announces happily. “I spoke to my therapist over the phone, and she recommended us a place.”

The moderator smiles. 

“That sounds great, JJ,” she says warmly, “I’m so happy for you.”

“Congratulations!” Leo cheers from beside JJ, fist bumping his shoulder. “And here’s to a better future for all of us!”

He downs the water in the paper cone he’s holding. Yuuri is not holding anything so he just claps, chuckling a little as Leo tosses the paper cone into a nearby bin, before turning back to them with a more sober look on his face.

“Otabek says that I’m probably going to be discharged next week,” he shares. “I’ve found a good, affordable rehabilitation centre nearby, and will be checking myself in upon discharge.”

A round of  _ ooo _ ’s go around the room at that, followed by another round of applause.

“Well, I’d ask you to come back and visit,” JJ teases, elbowing him, “but really, rehab is more important. Best of luck, Leo!”

Leo just nods at him, grinning, and then turns to Yuri on his other side. Yuri’s cheeks grow slightly rosier as he clears his throat, expression moody.

“I’ll,” he mumbles, “probably be checking myself into the same centre when I’m discharged, whenever that is. Otabek thinks that the addiction might be due to some underlying anger issues, so we’re working on that first.”

More applause. Leo cheers, and JJ lets out a few short hoots as Yuri sinks down lower in his chair, arms crossed and face only reddening further.

“Wow,” the moderator says, chuckling, as the din dies down. “I’m glad to see that you three seem to be making progress! That’s cause for celebration, definitely. Does anyone else have anything to share?”

Yuri shifts a little in his seat and  _ elbows  _ Yuuri sharply in the ribs. Yuuri jumps, chair screeching loudly with his movement, and then stills as everyone turns to look at him. After a short silence, he clears his throat as, on his other side, Viktor reaches out to hold his hand with a patient smile.

“Minami and I have arranged for me to see a cognitive behavioral therapist once I’m discharged,” he shares. “We haven’t made a first appointment yet, because we don’t know when I’ll be discharged, but I suppose this is a thing now.”

The moderator raises both eyebrows. “Wow!” she gasps. “It’s rare to see such progress all around the room! I’m so glad!”

“Hear, hear!” Leo yells playfully.

Another round of applause goes around. JJ even comes over to shake his hand, clapping him jovially on the back. Once the noise has died down again, however, and everyone is back in their seats, everyone’s gaze seem to move naturally around the circle to Viktor, sitting on Yuuri’s other side. Even Yuuri turns to look at him, smiling tenderly as he squeezes the hand in his. Viktor startles at the sudden attention, but his surprise quickly fades to a gentle smile.

“I’m doing well,” he says simply.

It seems to take a moment for the moderator seems to realize he is done. She clears her throat, bringing her hands together.

“Right,” she concludes. “I guess that wraps up today’s community meeting. I’m... glad you’re doing well, Viktor.”

Everyone else begins to stands then, stretching, groaning, or chatting amicably as they leave the room. As the others drain out of the room, Yuuri turns to Viktor, intending to sneak in a quick kiss to the cheek, but falters at the expression on Viktor’s face. The expression goes away almost immediately, however, as Viktor notices his worry and frowns in concern.

“Is something wrong?” he asks, rubbing a hand soothingly down Yuuri’s back.

Yuuri just looks at him for a moment longer, and then finally, leans in to kiss him on the cheek.

“Nothing, love,” he whispers. “Just a trick of the light.”

Viktor’s concern melts away into a tender smile, and he leans over, pressing a gentle kiss to Yuuri’s forehead. Somehow, however, that tender smile only deepens Yuuri’s worry, deepens his certainty that he hadn’t imagined the odd look on Viktor’s face at all. Viktor had been smiling too, just a moment ago, but that smile...

That smile had been completely devoid of cheer.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, toothbrush still in hand, Yuuri exits the bathroom to see Cao Bin in the corridor, for the first time in— Yuuri doesn’t even  _ know  _ how long it’s been. This is maybe only the  _ second _ time Yuuri has seen Cao Bin outside of his room. He usually never comes out for meals, relying on the orderly to bring his tray into his rooms. He had eaten with them only once, but had just sat there, expressionless and silent, for the entire meal.

After a couple of seconds, it becomes clear that the man is just walking slowly, up and down their ten feet of corridor, again, and again, and again. As Cao Bin loops back around the other end of the corridor, coming slowly back towards Yuuri, Yuuri finally snaps out of his reverie.

“Good morning,” he greets, a little awkwardly.

Cao Bin stops right in front of him.

“Good morning,” he returns.

That’s the first time Yuuri has heard him speak. He has a pleasant voice, low and rumbly, if a little monotone. Yuuri blinks off the surprise and puts on a smile.

“It’s nice out today, isn’t it?” he tries, a little unnerved by the way Cao Bin is staring at a spot just to the left of his face, but trying hard not to show it. “It’s been a little overcast since autumn set in, but we have quite a bit of sun today.”

He winces internally at his own choice of topic.  _ Really, Yuuri? Talking about the weather? Are you that desperate?  _ He quickly redirects his attention away from his own thoughts, and towards his conversation partner, as Cao Bin speaks again.

“It’s nice out,” he agrees. “It really is nice out.”

Yuuri waits for a few seconds, but it soon becomes clear that Cao Bin will not say more. 

“Y—Yes, it is,” he says.

They stare at each other in silence. After a moment, Cao Bin turns away, and resumes walking down the corridor. Yuuri watches his retreating back, confused. Then, a sudden burst of determination comes over him, and he trots after Cao Bin.

“Why don’t I walk with you for awhile!” he offers. “You don’t come out very often. What brings you out here today?”

Cao Bin turns to look at Yuuri as they walk, side-by-side. After a short pause, he makes a strong gesture with one hand, as if stressing a point, nodding his head as he does.

“It’s nice out today,” he repeats, with more emphasis. “It really is nice out.”

Yuuri nods. “It is,” he agrees, and holds out his hand. “My name is Yuuri. What yours?”

He already knows the answer to that question, but he supposes  _ Cao Bin _ doesn’t know that he does, so it’s only polite to ask. Cao Bin takes his hand and shakes it.

“I’m Cao Bin,” he says, still shaking Yuuri’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you, isn’t it? Autumn is already here.”

He lets go of Yuuri’s hand as they loop around the end of the corridor. They continue walking back down in the opposite direction while Yuuri tries to process that non-sequitur, giving up after a slightly confused moment.

“It’s— nice to meet you too,” he returns, desperately racking his brain for a new conversation topic. “I’ve been here for a little more than two months now. How long have you been in Crisis Treatment, Cao Bin?”

Cao Bin appears to think about it for a moment.

“Two months,” he answers.

“Right, two months,” Yuuri says, nodding, and then pauses abruptly.

Wait.

That  _ couldn’t _ be right. Cao Bin has  _ definitely _ been here longer than Yuuri has. 

After another moment of confusion, he just decides to let it go again. It could very well be that Cao Bin had forgotten how long he’d been in here, and had just made up a number on the spot.

“So,” he says, just to fill the silence, still fishing mentally for something else to talk about, “you’ve been here for two months, have you?”

Cao Bin’s eyebrows draw together slightly, and he stops dead in his tracks.

“No,” he denies.

Yuuri stops as well, blinking, bewildered, at the other man. Cao Bin stares at him for a few long moments, before he finally speaks again.

“No,” he says again, shaking his head.

After a few more seconds of utter silence, Cao Bin seems to sense that the conversation has ended. Without another word, he resumes walking down the corridor, away from Yuuri. Yuuri just stares helplessly at his back until he hears a sharp  _ “psst!” _

He turns to see Yuri at the table in the common area, Emil curled up on the window ledge, and Michele sitting cross-legged across from him. The latter two are smiling somewhat apologetically at him. Yuri only sighs, and beckons to him. 

Yuuri sits down at the table, still slightly bewildered by the conversation he’d just had, and also… and also a little disturbed.

Yuri leans across the table, lowering his voice. “It’s useless trying to talk to him,” he mutters. “He always just repeats what you’ve said back at you, contradicts himself, and then pretends to have forgotten things he’s  _ literally _ just said. I don’t know if he’s trying to be funny or what.” 

Even more disturbed, Yuuri can only shake his head, peering over his shoulder to watch Cao Bin continue his slow, trailing journey up and down the corridor, neither his pace, nor his expression, ever once changing.

“Yuri,” he whispers then, still watching the man pace. “Yuri, I really,  _ really _ don’t think he’s trying to be funny.”

Emil speaks up suddenly from the ledge.

“The voices have gotten him for too long,” he says simply.

Both of them startle, turning to look up at Emil. The young man in question is wearing a solemn look now.

“If you spend too long with the voices, they begin to eat you up,” he explains. “First, your memory begins to go, and then your focus. Then, your voice begins to go too. You lose the words for things and the order they are supposed to go in. Then your senses go, and that’s the scariest part. Nothing makes sense anymore. You can’t say what you want to, and sometimes, you don’t even know what you want to say. Everything is in fragments. That’s how you know when the voices have got you, like they got him.”

He nods towards Cao Bin.

That explanation is… somehow even more disturbing than the conversation with Cao Bin had been. Something like a chill goes down Yuuri’s spine. Emil’s description sounds intensely frightening and abruptly, he wonders what that must feel like. The thought is terrifying.

A hand on his shoulder startles him, and he turns around, eyes wide.

Viktor smiles down at him, the expression a little sad. “He’ll be alright,” he says softly, nodding towards the pacing Cao Bin. “This is him on a particularly bad day, trust me. He isn’t always like this. We’ll see if he’s feeling better tomorrow, and if he is, maybe we can talk to him. How does that sound?”

It sounds good. Yuuri nods, thankful, so thankful for Viktor in that moment. He’s been such a rock, such a steady presence, for Yuuri  _ and _ for so many others.

Viktor turns around as Cao Bin comes wandering back towards them, and claps him on the shoulder, a friendly gesture.

“Good morning, Cao Bin!”

Cao Bin stops, and stares at Viktor for a long moment.

“Viktor.”

Viktor grins, nodding.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he says. “What’s going on? Do you want to sit with us at the table?” 

A pause. Cao Bin does not say anything, just frowns a little.

“No?” Viktor guesses. “Alright then, it’s good to get some walking done every now and then. Heaven knows I’ve been developing a bit of a pouch shut up in here.”

He pats his stomach, laughing, and this time, Cao Bin responds, nodding seriously.

“Yes,” he says. “It’s good. It’s very good. Thank you.”

Viktor waves, as if in goodbye, and then sits down at the table beside Yuuri. Behind them, Cao Bin continues his pacing as Viktor picks up the deck on the table, grinning.

“A round of Crazy Eights while we wait for the doctors?” he asks jovially.

Inside the nurse station, a phone begins to ring, the sound muffled through the glass. Miss Cary picks up the phone, pressing it to her ear briefly, before she opens the door and leans out. 

“A call for you, Mr. Katsuki!” she chirps.

Surprised, Yuuri stands up and goes over to her. This is the first time a call has come in for him through the nurse station. Miss Cary points to the landline on the desk with a warm smile. 

“I think it’s your brother, Mr. Katsuki!” she tells him. “I’ll transfer the call out to that phone.”

She ducks back into the nurse station, closing the door behind her, and presses a button on the phone inside the office. The landline in front of him starts to ring.

“I don’t have a brother,” Yuuri says, bewildered, but sits down at the table anyway, and picks up the phone. “Moshi moshi?”

A pause.

“Yuuri?”

It's—

“Phichit!” Yuuri cries.

_ “Yuuri!”  _ Phichit full-out  _ shrieks _ over the phone. “Oh my  _ god,  _ Yuuri, you have  _ no idea  _ how long it took me to find this number. Like, that night, the police refused to let me come with you, but they told me they were taking you to Montreal General, then I called Montreal General and they said that when you arrived at the ER there were too many people waiting and so the police turned around and brought you  _ another  _ hospital, but they either wouldn’t tell me or didn’t know  _ which  _ hospital, and then—“

Yuuri just blinks a few times, overwhelmed, as Phichit continues to rattle on like a bulldozer, sounding  _ extraordinarily  _ like his usual self.

“—then I found your _sister_ on Instagram from a photo you tagged her in five years ago and I… DMed her over Instagram? She doesn’t even use Instagram, does she? She only had two pictures up. Anyway, it took about a week before she replied saying that you were in this hospital and, oh my god, Yuuri, you will not _believe_ how hard it was finding just which ward to call, like, Yuuri, I’ve been calling for a week straight, every single day, and getting transferred through five different departments each time. Either someone doesn’t pick up, or I eventually get this grumpy sounding nurse who tells me—“

Phichit’s voice drops, slowing into a pissy drawl.

“— Mr. Katsuki is not in at the moment,” he intones, “or sometimes, Mr. Katsuki doesn’t want to speak to you— and by the way, I can never hear her asking you if you want to speak to me! Unless, Yuuri, you really did tell her that you don’t want to speak to me, which I really hope wasn’t the case, but hey, if it was—“

Yuuri collects himself enough to finally respond.

“Of course not!” he yelps. “No nurse has ever told me that a call had come in through the nurse station! All my calls have been coming straight to  _ this _ phone!”

He pauses then, turning to look warily up into the nurse station. His suspicions begin to solidify in his head. His family has _this_ landline’s number from the first time he called Mari, but Phichit clearly hadn’t had the number. Coincidentally, Miss Carie hasn’t been on shift at Crisis Treatment all week, which he’s beginning to suspect is the reason behind—

_ This. _

He clears his throat. “In any case, I never told the nurses that I didn’t want to speak to you, Phichit,” he ends off, somewhat awkwardly. “Nor would I ever do that.”

Phichit pauses.

“So—“ he begins again, after a moment, sounding a little choked now. “You’re not mad at me then?”

Yuuri blinks.

“What?“ he splutters. “No!” He hesitates there for a second, before sighing. “I honestly thought  _ you _ were angry with  _ me _ .”

“Why would  _ I _ be angry at  _ you?!” _

Yuuri lets out the breath that he hadn’t even known he was holding. A smile begins to creep slowly onto his face, and he huffs.”

“Well, I don’t know,” he manages, somewhat teasingly. “Why don’t you tell me why would  _ I _ be angry at  _ you?” _

Yuuri can practically hear Phichit rolling his eyes.

“Well, I don’t know  _ either _ , Mr. Katsuki,” Phichit sasses him back. He swallows, and then continues a smaller voice, “I kinda thought you were mad that I called the cops, and that you got shut up in there because of me.”

Yuuri closes his eyes. 

“Phichit,” he says hoarsely. “I thought  _ you _ were angry because I was so— so  _ out of control  _ that you literally had no other option but to call the cops. God, you shouldn’t have had to deal with that. I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” Phichit says.

They are both quiet for a long moment.

“So I guess we’re both idiots then,” Yuuri offers.

A snort, and then Phichit begins to laugh. 

“Speak for yourself,” he teases.

A tension that Yuuri hadn’t known was there eases in his chest, and just like that, they settle back into their usual dynamic, catching up on the time they’ve spent apart, and snarking back and forth as they do so. Phichit complains for the nth time about his practicum professor who, in his words, is a complete douchebag. Yuuri gossips with Phichit about some of the more interesting things that have been happening back home. He kind of wants to tell Phichit about the people he has met in psych, the friends he’s made, but it feels awkward to talk about them when they are all literally  _ sitting right there _ . God, he wants so much to tell Phichit about Viktor. He restrains himself, somehow. That can wait for another time.

At the end of their call, Phichit drops a bomb.

“Soooo,” he begins, “I’ve been in contact with Celestino recently. He’s pretty ripped for an old guy, isn’t he? Wonder how he does it.”

_ “Phichit,” _ Yuuri groans, before he fully processes what Phichit had just said. “Wait,  _ what?” _

Phichit laughs. “I said I’ve been in touch with Celestino. You know, the surgeon you’re training under? Really tall? Long hair in a ponytail? Has a bit of a unibrow?”

“I  _ know _ who Celestino is, Phichit,” Yuuri groans. “Why did you contact him?”

“I didn’t!  _ He _ contacted me! Yuuri, why would I contact your old boss for no reason? Who do you think I am?” Phichit lets out a huff. “He heard that you’d been admitted and wanted me to pass a message, that’s all. Then we met for coffee and gossiped about you.”

“Thanks,” Yuuri says dryly.

“He thinks the world of you!” Phichit tells him enthusiastically. “He wouldn’t stop singing your praises! Not that I would have tolerated him saying anything otherwise, really, but he really is fond of you, you know?”

Any anxiety that had been building up at the thought of Celestino  _ gossiping  _ about him dissipates at that declaration. A warm feeling begins to spread in his chest.

“Is he well?” he asks fondly.

“He  _ must _ be to be looking that goddamn fit! Is he a gym rat, Yuuri? Honestly, don’t you think he’d be pretty good-looking if he gave that unibrow a shave and… and maybe cut that ponytail off? It’s just really not a good look on anyone above the age of thirty, not gonna lie.”

Yuuri can’t help the laughter that bursts out of him at that. God, he’s missed Phichit so much.

“Okay, okay,” he grumbles good-naturedly. “Stop going all  _ Queer Eye _ on my boss, please, and tell me what his message is.”

Phichit sobers up at that.

“For now,” he begins, “he agrees with me that you  _ really  _ need some time to recover but, well, if you’d like to go back to your residency program once you’re feeling better…” Phichit stops to let out a little giggle. “Then Celestino would be  _ very _ eager to have you back!”

Yuuri’s eyes widen, slapping a hand over his mouth to conceal the gasp that slips out of him. The others turn to look at him from the next table. Sometime in the last fifteen minutes, Georgi and JJ have come out of their rooms and joined the others in the common area. Yuuri waves off their concern with a silent thumbs up as Phichit continues to rattle on over the line.

“Oh, and regardless of your choice,” he’s babbling, and Yuuri can just imagine him swinging his legs gleefully under his chair now, “Celestino also asks if you would  _ please  _ call him back— by the way, I told him your phone was confiscated and that’s why you didn’t pick up his calls, and that you’d be calling him upon discharge, so please do that. He is very concerned and would like to hear directly from you.”

A smile begins to creep onto his face.

“Phichit,” he says fondly, “You’re the best, you know that, right?”

Phichit laughs. 

“Of course I am!” he agrees easily. “So, what, will you consider going back and  _ liberating  _ Celestino of all his worries and regrets? He really wants you back, just saying.”

The smile widens into a grin, and Yuuri lowers his face into his hand, shaking his head slowly.

“Yes,” he agrees quietly. “Yes, I will.”

Phichit lets out a  _ squeal. _

“Alright! I’ll let Celestino know!” he giggles, “Man, Celestino is going to be  _ so _ happy to hear that you’ll consider his offer.”

They hang up soon after that, and Yuuri just sits back for a moment, vaguely overwhelmed by  _ just  _ how much his life seems to have turned around. He closes his eyes, smiling. Not that he could have done it without Viktor, really. Viktor, who’d listened, who’d done his best, who’d pushed him to do all the right things.

A profound sense of a gratitude wells up in him, so deep that it aches in his chest, in his throat, in his eyes, where tears are beginning to gather, and he finds himself standing with the magnitude of his emotion. Taking the two strides necessary to cross the common area, he reaches where Viktor is sitting, mid-game, and cups his face, tilting his chin up and into a deep kiss.

“Ugh,  _ gross!”  _ Yuri hollers immediately. “Get a fucking room! Blyad, you two are getting from bad to worse!”

The others just laugh and cheer as the two of them part, Emil jumping up and down and hooting loudly, and Georgi wearing a watery smile. Viktor just blinks dazedly up at him for a few moments. There is a faint blush across his nose now, sitting beautifully behind the freckles on his ivory skin.

“Yuuri?” he asks wonderingly.

Embarrassment crashes upon Yuuri then, much too late, as he realizes what he’d done. God, and in front of  _ so many people too!  _ He’s never going to live this down.

“Sorry,” he manages, face flaming as he quickly takes the seat beside Viktor. “I was just— feeling abruptly thankful. For everything.”

The door to the nurse station opens then, and Minami sticks his head out, giggling behind one hand. “Oh, Yuuri-kun~! Are you done with your man— I mean, your call?”

Yuuri lowers his face into his hands as the cheering starts up again. Michele has joined in with Emil’s hooting this time, and Yuri is attempting to boo over the din.

Minami giggles with faux-innocence. “If you’re done, you can come in now!”

Yuuri stands, and hesitates for a moment. Ah, heck it, he thinks. Dipping his head, he presses a kiss to Viktor’s hair.

“I’ll be back,” he whispers, before turning and striding into the nurse station amidst renewed cheers, determinedly not looking back.

His face is still burning as Minami lets the door swing shut behind him, chuckling, and sits down at his usual spot.

“You seemed  _ really  _ happy after that call, Yuuri-kun,” he observes cheerfully. “Did you receive some good news?”

Yuuri can only nod, smiling radiantly. “I got a call from my roommate, and the head of my residency program had actually offered to take me back once I’m discharged.”

Minami’s eyes widen almost comically, and he presses both palms to his cheeks in sheer delight. 

_ “The  _ Celestino Cialdini,” he fanboys in an awed whisper,  _ “personally  _ called to ask you to come back? Oh my god, Yuuri-kun, that’s amazing!  _ You’re  _ amazing! Wow!”

Minami leans over his clipboard, letting out a little squeal of joy as he begins to jot something down, and Yuuri can’t help but shake his head, laughing.  _ God,  _ this boy is endearing.

“Are you intending to take him up on his offer?” Minami asks, still scribbling.

“I told my roommate to tell him yes,” Yuuri says.

Minami throws back his head, and lets out something close to a  _ shriek _ . Miss Carie startles then, turning to look at them with a chuckle.

“Mon cheri,” she says gently, “please don’t let the head doctor see you yelling like that with your patient present.”

Minami slaps a hand over his mouth, hunching over. “Sorry,” he whispers, “I got a little too excited.”

He continues writing, a little more quietly this time, as Yuuri grins. More than anyone, Yuuri recalls the demands of professionalism placed upon those in their line of work, even as medical students. He had been much more subdued during his own rotations, but… he enjoys Minami’s enthusiasm more than he can say. Minami didn’t turn out to be the most professional, to fit that ideal of steady detachment, and yet he seems to be exactly what Yuuri needs.

Finally, Minami straightens up from his file, setting his pen down.

“Your life really seems to be getting on track, Yuuri-kun!” he observes happily. “How have you been feeling?”

Yuuri smiles.

“The best I’ve felt in a long, long time,” he admits, and is pleasantly surprised at how true that is.

Pleased, Minami nods to himself a few times, and then finally turns to look at Yuuri, beaming.

“I  _ really  _ think you’re ready to be discharged, Yuuri-kun,” he says.

Yuuri rocks back at that, stunned, and noticing his expression, Minami hastens to reassure him. 

“It’ll be a stepped process of course!” he yelps. “It won’t just happen overnight. We’ll start by giving you a pass to leave the hospital for an hour, then if all goes well, you’ll get a longer pass, and a longer one, until eventually you’ll be able to leave the hospital for good! The occupational therapist will support you every step of the way, and if you feel like you’re relapsing from the stress, we can always shorten the passes again and figure out what to do from there. How does that sound?” 

Yuuri considers that. It sounds— daunting, but manageable. It sounds—

“Pretty good, actually,” he says, surprised at the truth in his answer.

Minami smiles, picking up his pen again.

“I’ll write you a one-hour pass for tomorrow then.”

When Yuuri comes out of the nurse station, he’s still feeling a little poleaxed by everything that has happened. It must show in his expression, because as the others look up, the grins turn to looks of concern. Viktor stands, face worried.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Did something happen?”

Yuuri just shakes his head.

“My roommate called to say my boss is offering me my old job back,” he explains, “and now, Minami-kun thinks I’m ready to be discharged. He’s given me a one-hour pass for tomorrow.”

Viktor’s eyes widen.

Before he can say anything, though, JJ jumps, looking elated. “Getting a pass usually means that you’re on your way out!” he cries excitedly. “Congratulations!”

Another round of cheers go around the room, and this time, even Yuri joins in.

“Stay in contact, Yuuri,” Georgi tells him tearfully, “and do come back and visit us.”

“Buy me some cigarettes tomorrow, will you?” Yuri yells. “I’m almost out!”

“Aren’t you too young to be smoking?” JJ mutters.

“Aren’t you too old to be a moron?”

Yuuri chuckles as they descend once more into petty squabbling, and turns to look eagerly to Viktor. He can’t help but falter at what he sees. The grin slips slowly from his face.

Amidst the chaos, Viktor stands slightly apart. He is smiling, of course—

But his smile is completely devoid of cheer.

**Author's Note:**

> I will be following a weekly posting schedule! Again, please [reblog](http://madblanco.tumblr.com/post/183804857112/this-is-the-art-i-made-for-bees-ohfudgecakes) or [retweet](https://twitter.com/MadBlanco_/status/1111770572835323904) MadBlanco's amazing art for this fic!


End file.
